Athena Kolbe


Athena Kolbe is an American human rights researcher, and writer. She is employed with the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Kolbe joined the College of Health & Human Services School of Social Work faculty in August 2017.

Education

Kolbe received her BA in International Affairs & Labor Studies at Skidmore College; an MA in Theological Studies at Golden Gate Seminary; an MSW in Interpersonal Social Work Practice at Wayne State University; an MA in political Science at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor; and a PhD in Social Work & Political Science at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Kolbe’s professional experience includes work as a social work instructor at the State University of New York Brockport and at the Institute of Social Work & Social Science in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She has also worked as a journalist, a research assistant, a researcher, and a clinical social worker. Kolbe’s main areas of interest include human rights, needs assessment, and international social work.

Research on Haiti

In 2006, Kolbe published the results of a household study on Haiti in The Lancet. The study found that 8,000 people had been killed and an estimated 35,000 women and girls sexually assaulted in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area in the 22 months after the ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.
in 2009, in collaboration with the Small Arms Survey, Kolbe conducted a study in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, that found just over half the people in three highly populated zones had access to electricity. Most of the study participants used water kiosks as their main source of drinking water and few had water piped into their homes. Most homes used pit latrines and more than 90 percent of those surveyed by Kolbe used charcoal rather than gas as their cooking fuel.
Kolbe and colleagues conducted a post-earthquake needs assessment after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti that determined nearly 160,000 people had died in the Port-au-Prince area, less estimated death toll released by the Haitian government. Most of those killed in the earthquake were children under 12. Some of the most commonly reported illnesses after the earthquake were diarrhea, headaches and fever, and in some cases these treatable illnesses resulted in death. Kolbe et al. estimated that 10,000 individuals were sexually assaulted in the six weeks after the earthquake.

Research on Lebanon

In 2007 and 2008, Kolbe conducted the "Health Human Rights & Armed Violence in South Lebanon" study in South Lebanon. This study found that more than 5,000 people were injured and 70,000 homes damaged in the 2006 Lebanon War between Israel and Hizbollah.

Other writings

Kolbe and Royce Hutson co-authored "Survey Research", a chapter in The Handbook of Social Work Research Methods, edited by Bruce Thyer.