May Salon - Fayola Jacobs
May 11, 2022

Salon Topic:
Beyond Vulnerability: How Intersectionality Shifts Our Understandings of Environmental Disasters

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Salon Guests:
Fayola Jacobs, PhD
Assistant Professor, Humphrey School of Public Affairs
University of Minnesota

Salon Description:
Dr. Jacobs will talk about her work critiquing the concept of social vulnerability, as used in urban planning literature and disaster studies. Social vulnerability is often defined as the ability of a person or community to cope with, adapt to, and recover from environmental disasters. She will discuss the ways that the uncritical framing of vulnerability limits the possibilities for understanding systemic causes of disasters and the possibilities that intersectionality offers for understanding disasters and envisioning more equitable environmental futures.

Guest Bio:
Fayola Jacobs is an assistant professor in the urban and regional planning area of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. She uses Black geographies, Black feminist, and environmental justice literatures to analyze efforts to plan for disasters and climate change and, more importantly, to work with communities to build more just environmental futures.