Urban Fire Risk Education And Gender In Informal Settlements

Principal Investigator: Helen Underhill
Research Assistants: Laura Hirst (UK), Samira Koujok (Lebanon)
Funder: British Academy
Amount: £10k
Duration: January 2019 - June 2020

This work explores how gender (understood broadly) shapes knowledge and understanding of fire risk and the possibilities of context-specific fire education within informal tented and urban settlements in Lebanon. By focusing on knowledge of fire from a gendered learning perspective, we aim to:

1) To understand how intersecting social identities shape vulnerability to fire risk and access to knowledge and education about fire prevention and response

2) To develop an understanding of fire education pedagogies that can respond to the specific contextual needs and learning processes of the diverse populations within IS.

By drawing attention to the lived experience of fire and fire risk within refugee and low-income populations, this research will help to demonstrate that fire is a hazard that requires more than technical solutions. It will reflect on how education and learning are conceptualized within current approaches to fire risk education in informal settlements and, through intersectional, arts-based methodologies that recognise diversity (for example, in relation to gender, ethnicity, age, class, religion, education and income) explore pedagogical possibilities for a reimagining of fire education in these contexts.