61 Uralba Street
Lismore
Seminar available in-person and via Zoom (see registration link).
This seminar will explore the critical role of community-led grassroots organising during and after climate-related disasters like bushfires and floods, focusing on three impacted sites in New South Wales. It will draw on data from recent research interviews and analysis of connections between people/groups and disaster management agencies. It will describe how a key barrier to the work of community-led groups was their lack of recognition by disaster management agencies. However, our research also found positive examples of lessons learned and changes enacted since the 2022 Northern Rivers floods and landslides disaster illustrating the potential for meaningful collaboration when agencies invest in relationship-building, respect community knowledge, and adopt flexible approaches. We argue for a cultural shift within disaster management agencies to enhance recognition, relationships of trust, and collaboration.
Co-authors
Prof Amanda Howard, Dr Scott Webster, A/Prof Petr Matous, A/Prof Margot Rawsthorne, Dr Jodie Bailie, Prof Nader Naderpajouh, Gemma Viney; Zac Gillies-Palmer
About Dr Jo Longman
Jo is a Senior Research Fellow based at the University Centre for Rural Health (UCRH) in Lismore, NSW. She is a social scientist working across a diverse range of rurally-focused qualitative and mixed methods health research and evaluation projects. She co-led the UCRH’s Community Recovery After Flood studies exploring the experience of flooding and mental health of the community following catastrophic flooding in the Northern Rivers in 2017. She focused on disseminating the key learnings from those studies in the context of the 2022 Northern Rivers floods and landslips. In late 2020 Jo led a project on the mental health impacts of climate change more broadly, and building resilience to those impacts in rural communities. In 2022-4 she was the chief investigator for the Northern Rivers arm of a qualitative project exploring self-organising following disaster and for a project in 2024 exploring disaster management agencies’ connections to community.
About Emma Pittaway
Emma Pittaway became involved in community-led disaster recovery and resilience research at UCRH in the aftermath of the catastrophic 2022 Northern Rivers floods and landslides. This research aims to identify the dynamics of community-led disaster organising, understand the interface between community groups and disaster management agencies, and most recently, to follow the emergence of a regional alliance of grassroots community resilience groups. Emma has been a teaching associate at Southern Cross University since 2014 and prior to that at the University of New South Wales. She has a background in community development, refugee advocacy and climate activism and holds a Master of Social Development from the University of New South Wales.
