His specializations include gender, culture, and inequality, as well as microsociology and the social dimensions of disaster. He is editor (with Elaine Enarson) of the interdisciplinary anthology The Women of Katrina: How Gender, Race, and Class Matter in an American Disaster (Vanderbilt University Press, 2012). Focusing on the gendered dimensions of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. David’s research has investigated the ways in which disaster-related emergent groups, including those led by women, have provided important social and public services usually assumed by the state in non-crisis times. He has also examined how women’s post-disaster labor is linked to broader social and economic changes such as state restructuring, neo-liberal reform, and the privatization of post-disaster recovery.