Imaginaries of Resilience
Name of Event/Lecture
Imaginaries of Resilience
Name of Speaker
Elizabeth Yarina
Location
SDE 3, Level 4, LT 423
You are cordially invited to attend the research seminar by Elizabeth Yarina:
Date: 4 Feb 2026
Time: 09:00 – 10:00
Venue: SDE 3, Level 4, LT 423
Imaginaries of Resilience
Why are the visions of a climate-adapted world set out in resiliency plans so difficult to translate into reality? Resilience, as a slippery concept, means different things to different actors involved in the creation of such plans and projects. Drawing on past research on globetrotting water experts as well as Yarina’s current book project Plans that Leak: Living with Climate Adaptation in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, this talk looks at the ways designers, planners, officials and citizens leverage both rhetoric and technical tools to put forward contested ideas of resilient futures, in turn helping to explain the gap between climate-safe visions and unevenly flooded realities.
Dr. Lizzie Yarina is an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Planning at Northeastern University, where her work explores the relationship between environmental risk, design tools, and spatial politics. She holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from MIT.