Protecting marginalised communities
Start making a change - Dr Ksenia Chmutina shares what inspired her continuous research into the impact of disasters among marginalised communities, including some of her recent projects in this area.
Our research has a significant influence across the globe, and as a student on one of our courses, you could have the opportunity to be involved in world-leading research that changes people's lives.
Dr Ksenia Chmutina from the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering started her research around the impact of disasters among marginalised communities because she wanted to help alleviate human suffering.
Natural hazards, such as earthquakes, floods, landslides or hurricanes are natural processes that cannot be prevented, but disasters are not the same as natural hazards. An earthquake that happens in an uninhabited area is not typically considered a disaster because there would be no loss of human life and no damage to buildings and infrastructure. A natural hazard turns into a disaster only when it causes disruptions to the functioning of a community or a society.
The inspiration
Research has found that when governments deal with global disasters and conflicts, the policies and practices often cause inequitable access to resources among marginalised communities.
Not everyone is affected by disasters equally: we know, for instance, that more women than men die in disasters around the world, or that children and the elderly are more likely to be affected.
It is important to explore how marginalisation, discrimination, and inequitable access to resources, knowledge and support often turn natural hazards into disasters. This research helps us to progress towards a safer and more equitable world.
The research
The aim of Ksenia’s research is to review global development challenges through an intersectional and gender lens in research, policymaking and development. This means finding ways to view the most marginalised as individuals without reducing them to a category. Loughborough has joined universities around the world to examine how gender influences the way disasters and conflicts are managed.
Technical and scientific knowledge is extremely important because it helps us build structures that don’t collapse in an earthquake, or protect cities from flooding, or warn people about a hurricane – but it is not enough, because it does not consider the social, political and cultural complexities of societies. Once we learn the role that these complexities play in turning hazards into disasters, we can inform policies and support communities in enhancing their capacities.
My research has led to a variety of funded projects, with the most recent being the Gender Responsive Resilience and Intersectionality in Policy and Practice (GRRIPP) project. It is a £4.8 million project funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) in which we connect experts, academics, policymakers and practitioners from the UK, Africa, South America and South Asia to develop gender-responsive policies and practices for disaster risk reduction.
The future
This research continues to make a change across the world every day. For example, Ksenia devised the technology and methodology for a game called inSIGHT, launched by the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), aiming to give a voice to marginalised communities from a variety of demographic groups who are not often consulted when developing disaster risk reduction strategies.
Ksenia, together with Dr Jason von Meding from the University of Florida, also hosts a Disasters: Deconstructed podcast that is aimed at a non-academic audience to ensure this research is not only accessible to academics and policymakers, but also to wider communities.
The involvement of civil and architectural engineers, architects, construction managers and urban planners in disaster risk reduction has been largely associated with a range of critical activities, such as temporary shelters before and after a disaster, restoration of public services, and more. However, these professionals have a much broader role to anticipate, assess, prevent, prepare, respond and recover from disasters.
The next generation of built environment professionals will need to consider disasters more than ever before, and therefore must be better at understanding contextual realities to work for the wellbeing of the society – and that’s what students learn in my classrooms.
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