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DR. SHIRLEY LASKA
Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of New Orleans with the Lowlander Center
Mitigation, Community Engagement & the Resettlement
Friday, September 10 @ 11:15 am – 12:30
1.5 HSW
OUTLINE
Dr. Shirley Laska, along with three guests from UNO, and the mitigation center, Center for Hazards Assessment, Response & Technology (UNO-CHART), will begin by showing the importance of architecture in the work that the center accomplished following Katrina, through its approach to sustainability and resilience efforts and strategies. UNO-CHART is an applied social science hazards research center at the University of New Orleans that collaborates with Louisiana communities including the City of New Orleans and its surrounding parishes to assist in the development of best practices for reducing risks and help in implementing these practices to achieve comprehensive community resilience.
BIOGRAPHY
Shirley Laska, PhD, is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of New Orleans where in 2002 she created the Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology (UNO-CHART) (www.uno.edu/chart/), a center that has developed collaborative approaches to reduce communities’ vulnerability to natural and technological risks and trained over 100 masters and PhD students in such applications and community engagement. Recently she co-founded the Lowlander Center (lowlandercenter.org), a non-profit organization which helps coastal Louisiana communities and their residents build capacity and resilience for place and people in the context of challenges such as climate change, coastal land loss and technological hazards such as the BP oil spill. Author and co-author since Hurricane Katrina of over 20 peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as a book, book chapters and reports focused principally on hurricane and climate change resiliency response, she pursues these objectives both “within the levees” in the urban setting (post-disaster gentrification) as well as in the rural areas of coast Louisiana (community resettlement of Isle de Jean Charles).