Andrew Hopkins is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Australian National University in Canberra.
He was a consultant to the US Chemical Safety Board in its investigation of the Texas City accident. His book on that accident, was titled Failure to Learn: the BP Texas City Refinery Disaster. He was again a consultant to the Board for its investigation of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster and has written a book on that subject - Disastrous Decisions: The Human and Organisational Causes of the Gulf of Mexico Blowout.
In all he has written some fifteen books, with more than 90,000 copies sold.
He was the winner of the 2008 European Process Safety Centre safety award, the first in time it was awarded to someone outside Europe.
In 2016 he was made an honorary fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers in recognition of his “outstanding contributions to process safety and to the analysis of process safety related incidents”.
He has a BSc and an MA from the Australian National University, a PhD from the University of Connecticut and is a Fellow of the Safety Institute of Australia.
His current research interests are in responses to climate change.