About the project
Despite the integration of ‘resilience’ into most UK government policy since 2004, there is little understanding of what resilience looks like in practice. This project explores the lived experience of resilience to extreme heat through community perspectives, narratives across diverse forms of literature, and government policy.
The drive to create resilient communities able to cope with and thrive through climate change is hindered by: disagreement over the meaning of resilience; a lack of empirical evidence of resilience in practice; and a lack of focus on the quality/ies of climate resilience.
This project will contribute to these research gaps by analysing the lived experience of resilience to heatwaves in the UK, analysing a range of texts and perspectives to reveal the narratives and understandings that exist in relation to resilience. Working with households affected by extreme heat in the UK the student will explore social, political and cultural interpretations of resilience, using the experience of the 2022 UK summer heatwave.
The student will:
- deliver a literature review of household resilience to heat extremes internationally
- Explore the multiplicity of meanings of resilience to heatwaves in archival literature, in social narratives and in government policy
- Identify social perceptions of resilience to heat (among different groups including UK nationals, international migrants and refugee communities)
- Create an evidence base of perceived actions to create resilience to heat and exemplar scenarios of heat resilience
- Develop a theory of place based resilience to heat
This research will generate scenarios of resilience to extreme heat, showing the multiplicity of lived experiences of resilience in the UK that will contribute to a UK specific theory of resilience to extreme heat.
