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Kai Theodor Erikson (born 1931) is an American sociologist, noted as an authority on the social consequences of catastrophic events. He served as the 76th president of the American Sociological Association.

Born in Vienna to famed psychologist and sociologist Erik Erikson and his wife Joan, Kai Erikson graduated from The Putney School in Vermont, Reed College in Oregon, earned a PhD at the University of Chicago, and joined the faculty of Yale University in 1966. He now holds the title William R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of Sociology and American Studies. He edited the Yale Review from 1979 to 1989 and first attracted professional attention with his book, Wayward Puritans, based on his doctoral dissertation.

Erikson has studied a number of sociological disasters, including the nuclear fallout in the Marshall Islands in 1954; the Buffalo Creek flood in West Virginia in 1972 (resulting in the award-winning 1978 book Everything In Its Path); the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979; the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989; and the genocide in Yugoslavia that took place from 1992 to 1995.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Kai T. Erikson", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0