Dr Alex Arnall
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+44 (0) 118 378 8369
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Associate Professor of Environment and Development
- Head of Department, International Development
- Programme Director of the
Areas of interest
- Flooding, coastal erosion and sea defences
- Understandings of, and responses to, sea level rise
- Managed retreat and natural flood management
- Anthropocene studies and political ecology/geology
Research projects
- Stories of the Sea: Remembering Storms to Build Resilience, 2025 (AHRC Impact Accelerator Grant)
- Exploring the Histories of People’s Relationships with the Sea in Borth, 2024 (AHRC Impact Accelerator Grant)
- Stories we live by: Discipline-Hopping to Address the ‘Imagination Deficit’ in Anthropocene Thinking, 2023 (NERC Discipline Hopping for Discovery Science)
- Everyday Security and Global Environmental Change, 2021-22 (ºÚ¹Ï³ÔÁÏÍø Research Fellowship)
- Visualising and Representing Environmental Change in Island Communities, 2020-2021 (ESRC-DFID Joint Fund)
- Sea-Level Rise and Everyday Lives in Small Island States, 2019-2022 (Australian Research Council)
- , 2017-2019 (ESRC-DFID Joint Fund)
- Marginal or Marginalised? Investigating Discourses of International Land Acquisition in Southern Mozambique, 2015-16 (British Academy)
- Perceptions and Understandings of Climate Change and Migration: Conceptualising and Contextualising for Lakshadweep and Maldives, 2012-15 (The Research Council of Norway)
- Involuntary Resettlement and Livelihoods Restoration in Flood-Affected Communities in Mozambique, 2011-13 (British Academy)
Background
I am a Human Geographer studying the relationship between society and environmental change, mainly in relation to coastal management, erosion and flooding. There are presently three central themes to my work:1) how sea level rise is understood and being acted upon by governments and affected coastal communities; 2) the social dimensions of managed retreat as a flood management and coastal rewilding strategy; 3) Natural Flood Management (NFM) in inland and coastal settings, especially with regard to local community involvement and action. To date, my research has looked at these issues and interventions in three main countries: Mozambique, the Maldives and the UK.
I have a DPhil in Geography from the University of Oxford on development processes in flood-affected resettlement communities. Prior to joining the ºÚ¹Ï³ÔÁÏÍø, I worked as a Consultant for the international firm Environmental Resources Management (ERM) and then as a Research Officer at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS).