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Our research project staff lead and supervise research and contribute to the strategic direction of the department.
Research Associates and Fellows
 | Dr Louisa AcciariRole: Research Fellow and Co-director of the Centre for Gender and Disaster Dr Louisa Acciari has a Master's in Comparative Politics – Latin America (Sciences Po Paris) and a PhD in Gender Studies (LSE). She is one of the Co-Directors of the RDR Centre for Gender and Disaster. Her research looks at gender in the world of labour through an intersectional and decolonial lens, and in particular, at how marginalised and informal women workers organise to defend their rights. She has been studying and collaborating with the domestic workers’ movement in Brazil and Latin America since 2014 and recently started researching the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the sector. Before joining UCL in August 2020, Louisa worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro for two years and has extensive experience in conducting research, consultancy and training on gender and labour rights with the ILO, the International Domestic Workers’ Federation, Solidarity Centre and the OECD, among others. She currently works as Global Network Coordinator for the GRRIPP project. |
Dr Jonathan BarnesRole: Research Fellow in Climate Change Adaptation | |
Dr Thaisa Comelli DutraRole: Postdoctoral Researcher in Urban Risk Governance, Urban Cities Dr Thaisa Comelli (Senior Research Fellow, Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction (RDR), UCL) is an urban planner with expertise in participatory and community-led approaches to sustainable and equitable urban development. Over the last 10 years, she has worked in more than 15 different urban and social contexts across the global north and south, liaising with both local communities and institutional actors to deliver concrete impact for vulnerable and marginalized groups. Her experience includes collaborations with global institutions such as United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), UCLG-Africa, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and World Habitat. | |
Dr Susannah FisherRole: Future Leaders Fellow in Climate Change Adaptation Susannah works across research, policy and practice on adapting to climate change. Her interest is in ensuring climate finance supports effective and equitable adaptation, and that adaptation is at the scale and ambition we need for the escalating impacts of climate change. She is the Principal Investigator of a five-year research programme exploring the politics of knowledge in climate change adaptation, funded by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship. Before joining RDR, Susannah led a research portfolio in Europe’s climate innovation agency and provided technical support to climate funds, philanthropy and civil society on adaptation. She has been a team leader at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) developing action research with local and national governments and an adaptation expert in the UN African Climate Policy Centre based in Addis Ababa (UNECA). She was previously a Lecturer in the Development Planning Unit and holds a PhD from the geography department at the University of Cambridge.
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Professor Maureen FordhamRole: Professorial Research Associate, Visiting Professor and Director of the RDR Centre for Gender and Disaster Maureen Fordham is the Director of the RDR Centre for Gender and Disaster. She has been researching disasters since 1988 and is an expert on community-based disaster risk reduction and vulnerability analysis, focusing on the inclusion of a range of marginalised social groups in disaster risk reduction, especially women and girls. She was a founding member of the Gender and Disaster Network in 1997 and is the Coordinator of its website (www.gdnonline.org) and activities. She has been a governmental advisor at all scales from local through national to the global UN level. She was closely involved in negotiations which led to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. She was a facilitator and researcher involved with developing a gender-responsive National Resilience Programme for Bangladesh (launched August 2017) together with the Government of Bangladesh, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UN Women and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). | |
Dr Femke MulderRole: Senior Research Fellow, AGILE Femke Mulder is a senior research fellow for the AGILE project at the Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London, in the United Kingdom. Her areas of expertise are disaster management science, the sociology of disasters, and humanitarian studies. Her research focuses on localised, participatory and inclusive approaches to risk communication and disaster knowledge management. | |
Tyler ValiquetteRole: Research Associate, Uncovering the Hidden Dangers: The Risk of Human Trafficking for Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking and Refugee Children in Home Office-Operated Hotels | |
Dr Jingren WuRole: Research Fellow in Damage-Dependent Fragility and Consequence Modelling | |
Project Staff | |
Aishath GreenRole: Research Project Officer Aishath Green is a Research Manager for the Accountable Adaptation Programme based at RDR. Aishath has an MSc in Environment, Politics and Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and has been working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant on the Environment and Sustainable Development MSc at UCL’s Development Planning Unit (DPU) for the past two years. During this time she has been involved in guiding young development professionals through DPU’s research learning alliances, with partner organisations including the Centre for Community Initiatives (CCI) and Ardhi University in Tanzania. Prior to this Aishath has also worked in communications with the architectural and design charity CatalyticAction and on freelance projects with Southern Voice, a network of think tanks from the Global South seeking to rebalance the knowledge asymmetry within development. | |