Retreat Rebuild: Keynote Lecture by Sara Pantuliano, with Rosetta S. Elkin and Vincenzo Bollettino

Disaster recovery is entrenched in the landscape. Lives are put at risk when land heaves, slides, or shakes, when it becomes inundated or undergoes drought, when it is submitted to unrestrained development. Land issues are at the crux of conflicts as well as post-conflict reconstruction efforts. And yet, disaster response operations—which focus on alleviating suffering and meeting immediate human needs—cannot account for the fluidity and longer time horizons that define the risk. As a result, land rarely serves as the primary topic of research in the humanitarian field. This lecture brings into view the necessarily fluid effects that disasters have on the land and the humanitarian action that unfolds in response, with the aim of furthering the collaboration between humanitarians and designers.

Sara Pantuliano, managing director of the Overseas Development Institute and editor of the journal Disasters, will present this talk, along with Vincenzo Bollettino, director of the Resilient Communities Program, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Rosetta S. Elkin, assistant professor of landscape architecture and co-director of the Master in Design Studies Risk & Resilience Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

This lecture serves as the keynote for Retreat Rebuild, a joint colloquium between the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.

Cosponsored by the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, the Harvard Art Museums, and the Harvard University Asia Center.

The lecture will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level. Please enter the museums via the entrance on Broadway.

Free admission

Complimentary parking available in the Broadway Garage, 7 Felton Street, Cambridge.