Maria Rusca

Maria Rusca

Dr

Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

I am currently open to supervising PhD students who are interested in exploring critical approaches to human-environment geographies, with a focus on development challenges in the global South, particularly in relation to climate change, water governance, and urban development. In my supervision, I emphasise political ecology and climate and water justice as lenses through which to examine environmental issues, focusing on the power dynamics, inequalities, and justice dimensions that shape human-environment relations.

Potential research topics include:

• Urban water governance and climate change: Investigating how access to water, sanitation, and other essential services is shaped by climate-related challenges in cities in the global South. Projects could use the lenses of political ecology and water justice to critically examine everyday risks and urban disasterscapes in the global South.

• Adaptation to Climate Extremes: Examining the social and environmental impacts of extreme climate events, with an emphasis on how power relations and inequalities shape adaptive capacities. Research could draw on the climate justice lens to explore uneven vulnerabilities and the role of policy and governance in addressing these issues.

• Political Ecologies of Climate Futures: Utilising the lens of political ecology to critically analyse how climate futures are imagined and constructed. PhD projects could focus on the role of power and justice in shaping future climate scenarios, as well as developing participatory and pluralistic approaches to envisioning just climate futures.

• Hydrological Modelling and Power: Investigating the intersection of hydrological modelling and political ecology to explore how models can capture the influence of power relations, policy decisions, and uneven development trajectories. This research could focus on creating power-sensitive models that address the justice implications of climate extremes and their uneven distribution.

Students are encouraged to propose projects that integrate these lenses to explore the intersection of social, climate, and/or hydrological sciences. Potential methodologies include qualitative and ethnographic approaches, participatory research methods, normative future visioning, and interdisciplinary approaches. These interdisciplinary methods could range from case studies that integrate social and climate and or hydrological data, to more complex approaches that involve repurposing hydrological or climate models with social science insights, or scenario-based approaches for envisioning alternative climate futures.

I maintain strong national and international collaborations, providing PhD students with opportunities to engage with interdisciplinary networks across the UK, Europe, Africa, and beyond.

Personal profile

Overview

My work focuses on political ecologies of water and hydroclimatic extremes, critical disaster studies, climate urbanism and experimental political ecologies. Although my research is firmly rooted at the intersection of development studies and environmental geography, I am committed to developing research at the nexus between social and natural sciences to further the fields of political ecology and development studies. I draw on multiple qualitative research methods and have developed novel interdisciplinary and film-based approaches to examine socionatural disasters, scenarios of societal responses to extreme events, and the urban metabolism of water quality inequalities and waterborne diseases. My work is published in high-ranking journals across geography, environmental science, geosciences and water resources.

I have over six years of extensive experience of working in diverse academic settings (UK, The Netherlands, Italy, Namibia and Sweden) and of developing a range of courses for students with different academic backgrounds both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. 

Impact

I believe that a strong connection and commitment to a cause comes with inspiring stories. Documentaries can connect people to others through individual and collective stories and are an effective and engaging way to communicate with decision-makers.

I am the founder of Whales That Fly: Documenting for Climate Justice, a media organisation that uses videography, documentary filmmaking, scientific articles and blogs to document the links between climate change, economic development and social-environmental inequalities.

As part of this, I directed and produced two documentaries that tell the stories of women and men living at the margins of the city and their everyday struggles to access water:

Water at the margins, Dir. M. Rusca, IHE Delft with Kings College London, Whales that Fly (WTF): 2019

Lilongwe Water Works?, Dir. M. Rusca, Kings College London, Whales that Fly (WTF): 2017

I am currently working on a documentary on everyday experiences of floods and droughts in rural Malawi and South Africa. The documentary, titled The aftermath of a disaster, is currently in postproduction.

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 1 - No Poverty
  • SDG 2 - Zero Hunger
  • SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
  • SDG 4 - Quality Education
  • SDG 5 - Gender Equality
  • SDG 6 - Clean Water and Sanitation
  • SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy
  • SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth
  • SDG 9 - Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
  • SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities
  • SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
  • SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production
  • SDG 13 - Climate Action
  • SDG 15 - Life on Land
  • SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
  • SDG 17 - Partnerships for the Goals

Research Beacons, Institutes and Platforms

  • Global inequalities
  • Global Development Institute
  • Creative Manchester

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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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