Natasha Miro
Great Flood Stories and What They Teach Us: Applying Lessons from Cross-Cultural Diluvial Traditions
PhD researcher
School of Humanities, University of Hull
Profile
My doctoral research is funded by the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Centre for Water Cultures. My PhD is an interdisciplinary project examining the global narrative of ‘The Great Flood’ across time, exploring what lessons these stories can teach about present day rising sea levels and increases in flooding and precipitation. I am interested in the building of climate and disaster resilience within communities, Indigenous land management approaches, and climate justice.
My Master’s dissertation explored these themes through the lens of wildfires. This project explored mid to long term disaster recovery processes in a California town decimated by wildfire three years prior to my project through the study of several NGOs still playing an active role in the community. Disasters receive significant attention in their immediate aftermath but recovery processes take years and by studying these longer term processes we can hopefully learn how to improve recovery processes and reduce barriers to recovery, particularly for those most vulnerable survivors. In my study of NGOs, I saw how these organisations tended to develop niches not catered to by state recovery processes, allowing them to aid survivors who had ‘fallen through the cracks’ of recovery assistance.
Previously I worked at the Countryside Education Trust, an environmental education charity. My first role there was a Heritage Lottery funded internship, focusing on sustainable farming. I subsequently worked on an Environment Agency funded project about the implication of sea level rise on a section of the New Forest coastline that is not designated any public funds for coastal defences. Both projects centred on public engagement, and key aspects to my work were creating interpretation for the charity’s climate centre and organising public events to raise awareness and promote participation around these topics.
Qualifications/Education
MSc Sustainability, Energy and Development, Durham University
BA Modern History and Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews
