Inherit Resilience Investigators
Dr Fabrizio Galeazzi
Fabrizio Galeazzi is an Associate Professor in Heritage and Creative Technologies at StoryLab, Anglia Ruskin University. He is a cultural heritage specialist with interdisciplinary expertise in the combination of new technology and storytelling to develop creative interventions for heritage revitalisation and sustainable development.
At StoryLab, he is exploring to what extent creative practice and storytelling can support people’s understanding of and engagement with tangible and intangible aspects of their heritage. He is particularly interested in evaluating the impact that the use of interactive/immersive media and participatory research might have on increasing marginalised and fragile communities’ awareness, adaptation and resilience to climate change and conflicts.
Fabrizio is a member of the Climate Heritage Network and has developed several digital training programmes, including the UNESCO Network for Mediterranean Youth programme, aimed at equipping partner youth organisations in the MENA region with new skills to support their engagement for the protection and promotion of cultural heritage.
Dr Aya Musmar
Assistant Professor in Architecture and Feminism, College of Architecture and Design, University of Petra, Amman
Aya Musmar is an assistant professor in Architecture and Feminism at the College of Architecture and Design, University of Petra, Amman. Her transdisciplinary research investigates humanitarian response in refugees’ spaces and beyond, it thinks of the refugee camp as a spatial phenomenon that embodies world unjust politics. She applies a decolonialist feminist critique and is interested in exploring the ways by which architectural research and architectural pedagogies could bear testimony to social injustice. Aya’s PhD thesis, Witnessing the Refugee Camp: Feminist Positions, Practices and Pedagogies, has been shortlisted for RIBA President’s Awards in 2020. Today, Aya is an active Co-I on multiple international research projects that look into displacement in Jordan and beyond.
Dr Davide Natalini
I am a Senior Research Fellow based at the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University, where I co-lead the Global Risk and Resilience research theme. I am an environmental social scientist with key applied expertise. My research interests are highly interdisciplinary and lie in environmental and climate change and its impacts on human systems.
My areas of expertise are environmental conflict, with specific focus on food, fuel and water riots, systemic risk and social-ecological resilience and participatory sustainable development.
I am interested in the development of measures to build resilience to climate-change-led challenges in complex settings, where social-ecological systems are at risk. These involve both anticipation measures by understanding multi-dimensional risk transmission pathways and by developing better responses by learning from past events and key stakeholder expertise. I approach these fields through qualitative (e.g. co-production and multi-stakeholder engagement) and quantitative (e.g. statistics, econometrics and computer simulation) methods.
Reem Hg Furjani
Research Fellow at the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS)
Reem is a researcher and activist in critical heritage and cultural policies. Holding Honours Masters & Bachelors degrees (RIBA) in Architecture from the University of Nottingham and Cardiff University in the UK, and an ongoing Ph.D., she studies community interpretations of heritage, social contestation, and embodied site-specific performativity to inform Cultural Participation policies in heritage and cultural management.
On the field, she advocates for Cultural Democracy on two levels: vertically by re-thinking the conventional approaches to heritage decision-making for including the plural and subjective possibilities of it from the grassroots; and horizontally by illuminating the effects of exclusive grassroot cultural practices in relation to social fragmentation and dominating identities.
Reem is the Founder & Managing Director of Scene, a non-profit for sustaining cultural heritage in the Medina of Tripoli by nurturing community engagements through cultural instruments.
Inherit Resilience Steering Committee
Jeannette Baxter
Director of New Routes, Old Roots
Dr Jeannette Baxter is Associate Professor in English Literature at Anglia Ruskin University and Director of New Routes, Old Roots, an action research hub for students, artists, schools, heritage organisations and community groups to explore issues of migration, social marginalisation and heritage through the arts. She has collaborated with participatory action researchers, community arts organisations, schools, refugee charities, UNHCR, Amnesty International, and members of the general public on numerous community history and heritage projects funded by the National Heritage Lottery and Arts Council England.
Elizabeth Landesberg
Instructor, Media Arts, School of Visual Art and Design, University of South Carolina
Elizabeth (EB) Landesberg is a filmmaker, producer, educator, and translator. She has collaborated with young people through educational programs, media workshops and community organizations throughout the Americas. As a Felsman Documentary Fellow in 2014-15, she facilitated documentary workshops with teenagers in Lima, Peru, who made media projects about their own communities, families and cultures. It is with two of these teenagers that the Syrian members of Another Kind of Girl Collective began their first cross-border collaboration, the result of which was the feature film Only the Ocean Between Us, which had its world premiere at Hot Docs (2021).
Claudia Schneider
Claudia Schneider is an Associate Professor in Migration Studies at Anglia Ruskin University with a particular interest in integration and migration. She completed her PhD in 2006 on German asylum policy (London School of Economics and Political Science, Sociology) and has led or co-led numerous UK and EU research projects on voluntary and forced migration. Claudia has been an international advisor for integration projects in Germany, Norway and Sweden and has widely published on migration in the context of policy, integration, transnationalisation, education and theory.
Nassima Chahboun
Nassima Chahboun is an architect and heritage activist from Morocco focused on community empowerment through heritage. She is the chair co-founder of Wiki World Heritage, an affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation that aims to foster open online content about UNSECO World Heritage, through participatory activities and the use of open digital platforms.
Imelda Phadtare
Senior Climate Advisor, Save the Children Australia
Visiting Research Fellow, Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin Universty
Mel is a climate change advisor, humanitarian and educator with 25 years of expertise. She was a member of the Advisory Board for a GCRF project focused on heritage-led resilience in Jordan’s refugee community. Mel is a Visiting Research Fellow with the Global Sustainability Institute of Anglia Ruskin University in the Risk and Resilience Department, and recently joined Save the Children Australia as Senior Climate Advisor. Prior to this Mel held roles in the private sector ActionAid as Head Humanitarian Response in Greece, and with Norwegian Church Aid as Climate and DRR Advisor in Vietnam, Laos and Brazil.
Inherit Resilience Partners
Professor Elizabeth Brabec
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Elizabeth Brabec is Professor and Director of the Center for Heritage and Society at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. Her current research is focused on climate-induced migration, and the role of heritage in mitigating the trauma of human movement and displacement. She is the editor of the journal Heritage & Society, Secretary General of the ISCCL (International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes), a scientific committee of ICOMOS, and member of the ICOMOS Climate Change and Cultural Heritage Working Group.
Dr Aida Essaid
Aida Essaid, PhD, has been the Director of IRCKHF since 2012. Aida received her Honours BA from the University of Toronto where she double majored in Political Science and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, and an MA in Middle East Politics and PhD in Politics from the University of Exeter.
Maja Jovic
Maja’s interests sit at the intersection of architecture and tourism, particularly looking at the creation of new narratives after a conflict and in general critical destination development. Her research and practice focus on contested heritage, branding, national identity, and belonging. She is a Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Tourism at the University of Westminster, speaker and curator.
HRH Princess Dana Firas
President, Petra National Trust
HRH Princess Dana Firas is a global advocate for heritage protection and preservation as a foundation for sustainable development, responsible tourism, political identity, and peace.
HRH was designated a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in June 2017. HRH currently serves as President of the Jordan National Committee for the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and President of the Petra National Trust.
Dr Momen El-Husseiny
Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, The American University in Cairo
Momen El-Husseiny is an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the American University in Cairo. He holds a PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley with a designated emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies and Anthropology. He is a registered architect in Egypt and a trained ethnographer. His scholarly work falls at the intersections of critical urban theory, extended urbanization, human livelihoods, and the politics of development in the Global South.
Christine Murphy
Christine Murphy is the Crisis Anticipation and Risk Financing MEAL Advisor at Start Network, where she works to evidence the value of and improve forecast-based anticipatory funding. She supports Start Network members to demonstrate the impact of anticipatory action, and especially in climactic crisis-vulnerable and fragile contexts. Before working at Start Network, she worked as a coordinator and support advisor within the Vulnerable Persons’ Resettlement Scheme in greater London.
