Recent Highlights

Resilient Calgary

Local and international speakers came together to deliver a series of short, thought-provoking talks related to disaster and resilience. This event explored compelling topics designed to provide those involved in disaster recovery and those who have been personally affected, engaging, expert insight into the unique and often devastating results of experiencing a natural disaster.

 

 

 

 

 

Guest Lecture: Now Where Are We Supposed To Live? How Natural Disasters Make Housing Inaccessible

 

 
Jeannie Haubert is an associate professor and chair of Sociology and Anthropology at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. She studies racial and ethnic relations, social inequality, disasters, and immigration. Jeannie earned her Ph.D at Tulane University in New Orleans in 2007. She is the sole editor of “Rethinking Disaster Recovery: A Hurricane Katrina Retrospective” published in February of 2015.

Beyond her book, Jeannie has published journal articles on attitudes toward immigrants in International Migration Review, on race-based housing discrimination in Organization and the Environment, and on international service learning in Humanity and Society. She has also contributed several chapters to edited volumes on housing discrimination following disasters and neoliberal urban revitalization strategies. Her current research involves comparative case studies of housing access following natural disasters with a particular focus on how historically marginalized groups are affected.

 

 

Guest Lecture: Were the Women Washed Away? The Gender of Vulnerability and Resiliency in Disaster

 

The days following Hurricane Katrina revealed to the public a stark divide in terms of vulnerability and risk to disaster. Photos of the most desperate people seeking refuge at New Orleans’ Superdome, a shelter of last resort, highlighted poor African Americans as least able to escape the floodwaters and all that followed.

Gender is also an important variable shaping experiences of disaster, yet scholars often overlook the ways gender impacts both personal and group risks. Women face unique challenges in disaster preparedness, evacuation, and recovery. Poor women of colour, especially single-mothers, have special needs that are not considered by emergency response organizations, leaving women and their kin to face higher rates of domestic and sexual violence, reproductive and prenatal health complications, and loss of social networks important for everyday survival.

Kristen Barber talked about these and other issues women faced during Hurricane Katrina, advocating for disaster scholarship that both are gender-sensitive and takes an intersectional approach to examine risk and resiliency.

 

Past Events

CCDR looks for every opportunity to bring the disaster relief community together to discuss ideas, share knowledge, and collaborate on projects.

Check out some of our past events:

• Were the Women Washed Away? The Gender of Vulnerability and Resiliency in Disaster
  with speaker Kristen Barber, PhD
• Welcome to Earthquake Country! Southern California as a Natural Earthquake Laboratory
  with speaker Robert-Michael de Groot, PhD
• Flood Hazard Identification Program: What you need to know about hydrologic analysis, hydraulic modelling, and flood mapping in Alberta
  with speaker Peter Onyshko, P.Eng.
• Now Where Are We Supposed To Live? How Natural Disasters Make Housing Inaccessible
  with speaker Jeannie Haubert, PhD
• Beyond Disaster Recovery: A View of New Orleans from Calgary Post-Flood