Hanna A Ruszczyk
Biographic Data
| ID | 997747 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hanna A Ruszczyk |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hanna A |
| FAMILY NAME | Ruszczyk |
| SIGNATURE | RUSZCZYK H A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3895-4881 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 82 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Humanitarian frontiering
Since 2014, humanitarian cash, vouchers, and digital transfers have grown from scattered pilot projects to a peak of 24% of all humanitarian aid distributed globally in 2022. Cash assistance programs require different and distinct relationships between aid and wider political economies than direct food aid: the removal of parallel markets for humanitarian food aid, imbrication of displaced people in local markets, negotiations and participation o…
Interdisciplinary perspectives on the intersections of roads, sustainable development, and disaster resilience
Natural hazard-influenced disasters, sustainable development, and roads are closely intertwined. Governments and funding agencies worldwide are increasingly focused on delivering disaster-resilient road infrastructure. However, the multifaceted, ubiquitous, and contested nature of road networks means that making them resilient to disasters is a complex task. Efforts to build resilient roads generate trade-offs against other policy goals like clim…
“We have arrived”
In this essay, Hanna Ruszczyk reveals how paved roads and clean streets in urban Nepal are specifically gendered desires and can serve to reify gendered power relations
Managed urban retreat
In response to narratives of the mass movement of people triggered by climate change, a number of “managed retreat” models have been proposed as policy options, especially for densely populated urban areas in the Global South. Reviewing a case study from Mongla, a secondary city in southwestern Bangladesh, we argue that a “crisis narrative” unhelpfully informs current discourses of “climate migration”, and oversimplify complex realities, creating…
Liveability and vitality
This paper presents a mixed method, participatory exploration of liveability as a stocktaking assessment with projections for urban vitality in cities, particularly in LMIC, small cities. The paper takes as its case study research conducted in 2019 and 2020 in Mongla and Noapara, south west Bangladesh. This paper illustrates firstly, the possibilities for the concept of liveability to produce nuanced, granular understandings of how small cities s…
Overlooked cities
There is growing scholarly attention to secondary and intermediary cities as their relevance for global urban development is increasingly recognised. We call urban academics, scholars, policymakers and practitioners to situate debates on these cities critically with the notion of “overlooked cities” to understand how knowledge from such cities is produced, circulated and negotiated in urban research and practice. This commentary aims to foregroun…
Urban health challenges
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a re-examination of our societies and in particular urban health. We argue that urban health needs to address three inter-related challenge areas - the unequal impacts of climate change, changing patterns of urbanization, and the changing role of the local government - across multiple spatial scales: from individual, households to neighbourhoods, cities, and urban hinterlands. Urban health calls for nimble institu…
Bodies as urban infrastructure
Drawing from deep longitudinal and ethnographic work, this article interrogates a set of key relationships between bodies, gender and infrastructure in the context of understanding cities such as Bharatpur and Dhangadhi in Nepal as well as Delhi, India. This article seeks to make two contributions. First, utilizing feminist political geography approaches, we examine bodies as infrastructure, referring to how the social and material work of the bo…
Epistemological freedom
Purpose The purpose of the paper is to challenge and address the limitations of the traditional system of knowledge production that is embedded in disaster and climate change research studies, and research studies in general. It argues that knowledge production in research processes conforms to colonialist thinking or west-inspired approaches. Such a system often results in the omission of crucial information due to a lack of participation, inclu…
Empowering women through participatory action research in community-based disaster risk reduction efforts
Contextualizing the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on food security in two small cities in Bangladesh
The COVID-19 pandemic is an evolving urban crisis. This research paper assesses impacts of the lockdown on food security and associated coping mechanisms in two small cities in Bangladesh (Mongla and Noapara) during March to May 2020. Due to restrictions during the prolonged lockdown, residents (in particular low-income groups) had limited access to livelihood opportunities and experienced significant or complete loss of income. This affected bot…
Newly urban Nepal
Urban planning guidelines and land use plans exist in Nepal, the difficulties lie in implementation. Specifically, who must follow the law and in which parts of the city must urban planning be implemented. This is being actively negotiated between newly elected local government officials and residents in rural areas of the city. This Urban Pulse essay presents an incremental logic of urban planning from the perspective of the local government as …
DE-densifying knowledge of cityness
I do not see the city through increasing population density. I do not see tight spaces ruled by horizontal nor vertically densification. I see regional cities, increasingly common spaces throughout the world whose geographic boundaries are expanding, where cities are becoming visibly ruralized. Cities that are full of agricultural fields that are rapidly disappearing to accommodate residents desires for housing. Where population density is decrea…
Aspirations in grey space
The discipline of geography struggles to engage with urban futures on terms that are meaningful to the world's urban majority. This paper reflects the need to open up empirically grounded dialogue on aspirations and their complex connections to perceptions of possibility and temporality. Drawing on research carried out in two medium‐sized cities overlooked by research (Bharatpur, Nepal; Zarqa, Jordan), this paper speaks back to contemporary disco…
Ambivalence towards discourse of disaster resilience
This paper investigates empirically how the international aid community (IAC)-donors and practitioners-considers and implements disaster resilience in a specific country setting, Nepal, and throughout the rest of the world. A key finding is that there is ambivalence about a concept that has become a discourse. On a global level, the IAC utilises the discourse of resilience in a cautiously positive manner as a bridging concept. On a national level…
Evolving Narratives of Hazard and Risk
A continuum of perceived urban risk – from the Gorkha earthquake to economic insecurity
Global discussions of risk in the disaster risk reduction literature do not necessarily reflect the range of risk as understood by residents in the urban South. This intra-urban comparison from Bharatpur, Nepal, where the Gorkha earthquake struck in 2015, shows how residents in two different wards perceive risks related to themselves, their families and their urban environment. The continuum of perceived urban risk includes events such as the Gor…
Bodies as urban infrastructure
Drawing from deep longitudinal and ethnographic work, this article interrogates a set of key relationships between bodies, gender and infrastructure in the context of understanding cities such as Bharatpur and Dhangadhi in Nepal as well as Delhi, India. This article seeks to make two contributions. First, utilizing feminist political geography approaches, we examine bodies as infrastructure, referring to how the social and material work of the bo…
Contextualizing the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on food security in two small cities in Bangladesh
The COVID-19 pandemic is an evolving urban crisis. This research paper assesses impacts of the lockdown on food security and associated coping mechanisms in two small cities in Bangladesh (Mongla and Noapara) during March to May 2020. Due to restrictions during the prolonged lockdown, residents (in particular low-income groups) had limited access to livelihood opportunities and experienced significant or complete loss of income. This affected bot…
Ambivalence towards discourse of disaster resilience
This paper investigates empirically how the international aid community (IAC)-donors and practitioners-considers and implements disaster resilience in a specific country setting, Nepal, and throughout the rest of the world. A key finding is that there is ambivalence about a concept that has become a discourse. On a global level, the IAC utilises the discourse of resilience in a cautiously positive manner as a bridging concept. On a national level…
Overlooked cities
There is growing scholarly attention to secondary and intermediary cities as their relevance for global urban development is increasingly recognised. We call urban academics, scholars, policymakers and practitioners to situate debates on these cities critically with the notion of “overlooked cities” to understand how knowledge from such cities is produced, circulated and negotiated in urban research and practice. This commentary aims to foregroun…
Urban health challenges
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a re-examination of our societies and in particular urban health. We argue that urban health needs to address three inter-related challenge areas - the unequal impacts of climate change, changing patterns of urbanization, and the changing role of the local government - across multiple spatial scales: from individual, households to neighbourhoods, cities, and urban hinterlands. Urban health calls for nimble institu…
Managed urban retreat
In response to narratives of the mass movement of people triggered by climate change, a number of “managed retreat” models have been proposed as policy options, especially for densely populated urban areas in the Global South. Reviewing a case study from Mongla, a secondary city in southwestern Bangladesh, we argue that a “crisis narrative” unhelpfully informs current discourses of “climate migration”, and oversimplify complex realities, creating…
Aspirations in grey space
The discipline of geography struggles to engage with urban futures on terms that are meaningful to the world's urban majority. This paper reflects the need to open up empirically grounded dialogue on aspirations and their complex connections to perceptions of possibility and temporality. Drawing on research carried out in two medium‐sized cities overlooked by research (Bharatpur, Nepal; Zarqa, Jordan), this paper speaks back to contemporary disco…
Newly urban Nepal
Urban planning guidelines and land use plans exist in Nepal, the difficulties lie in implementation. Specifically, who must follow the law and in which parts of the city must urban planning be implemented. This is being actively negotiated between newly elected local government officials and residents in rural areas of the city. This Urban Pulse essay presents an incremental logic of urban planning from the perspective of the local government as …
Liveability and vitality
This paper presents a mixed method, participatory exploration of liveability as a stocktaking assessment with projections for urban vitality in cities, particularly in LMIC, small cities. The paper takes as its case study research conducted in 2019 and 2020 in Mongla and Noapara, south west Bangladesh. This paper illustrates firstly, the possibilities for the concept of liveability to produce nuanced, granular understandings of how small cities s…
A continuum of perceived urban risk – from the Gorkha earthquake to economic insecurity
Global discussions of risk in the disaster risk reduction literature do not necessarily reflect the range of risk as understood by residents in the urban South. This intra-urban comparison from Bharatpur, Nepal, where the Gorkha earthquake struck in 2015, shows how residents in two different wards perceive risks related to themselves, their families and their urban environment. The continuum of perceived urban risk includes events such as the Gor…
Evolving Narratives of Hazard and Risk
A continuum of perceived urban risk – from the Gorkha earthquake to economic insecurity
Global discussions of risk in the disaster risk reduction literature do not necessarily reflect the range of risk as understood by residents in the urban South. This intra-urban comparison from Bharatpur, Nepal, where the Gorkha earthquake struck in 2015, shows how residents in two different wards perceive risks related to themselves, their families and their urban environment. The continuum of perceived urban risk includes events such as the Gor…
Ambivalence towards discourse of disaster resilience
This paper investigates empirically how the international aid community (IAC)-donors and practitioners-considers and implements disaster resilience in a specific country setting, Nepal, and throughout the rest of the world. A key finding is that there is ambivalence about a concept that has become a discourse. On a global level, the IAC utilises the discourse of resilience in a cautiously positive manner as a bridging concept. On a national level…
Empowering women through participatory action research in community-based disaster risk reduction efforts
Contextualizing the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on food security in two small cities in Bangladesh
The COVID-19 pandemic is an evolving urban crisis. This research paper assesses impacts of the lockdown on food security and associated coping mechanisms in two small cities in Bangladesh (Mongla and Noapara) during March to May 2020. Due to restrictions during the prolonged lockdown, residents (in particular low-income groups) had limited access to livelihood opportunities and experienced significant or complete loss of income. This affected bot…
Newly urban Nepal
Urban planning guidelines and land use plans exist in Nepal, the difficulties lie in implementation. Specifically, who must follow the law and in which parts of the city must urban planning be implemented. This is being actively negotiated between newly elected local government officials and residents in rural areas of the city. This Urban Pulse essay presents an incremental logic of urban planning from the perspective of the local government as …
DE-densifying knowledge of cityness
I do not see the city through increasing population density. I do not see tight spaces ruled by horizontal nor vertically densification. I see regional cities, increasingly common spaces throughout the world whose geographic boundaries are expanding, where cities are becoming visibly ruralized. Cities that are full of agricultural fields that are rapidly disappearing to accommodate residents desires for housing. Where population density is decrea…
Aspirations in grey space
The discipline of geography struggles to engage with urban futures on terms that are meaningful to the world's urban majority. This paper reflects the need to open up empirically grounded dialogue on aspirations and their complex connections to perceptions of possibility and temporality. Drawing on research carried out in two medium‐sized cities overlooked by research (Bharatpur, Nepal; Zarqa, Jordan), this paper speaks back to contemporary disco…
Epistemological freedom
Purpose The purpose of the paper is to challenge and address the limitations of the traditional system of knowledge production that is embedded in disaster and climate change research studies, and research studies in general. It argues that knowledge production in research processes conforms to colonialist thinking or west-inspired approaches. Such a system often results in the omission of crucial information due to a lack of participation, inclu…
Urban health challenges
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a re-examination of our societies and in particular urban health. We argue that urban health needs to address three inter-related challenge areas - the unequal impacts of climate change, changing patterns of urbanization, and the changing role of the local government - across multiple spatial scales: from individual, households to neighbourhoods, cities, and urban hinterlands. Urban health calls for nimble institu…
Bodies as urban infrastructure
Drawing from deep longitudinal and ethnographic work, this article interrogates a set of key relationships between bodies, gender and infrastructure in the context of understanding cities such as Bharatpur and Dhangadhi in Nepal as well as Delhi, India. This article seeks to make two contributions. First, utilizing feminist political geography approaches, we examine bodies as infrastructure, referring to how the social and material work of the bo…
“We have arrived”
In this essay, Hanna Ruszczyk reveals how paved roads and clean streets in urban Nepal are specifically gendered desires and can serve to reify gendered power relations
Managed urban retreat
In response to narratives of the mass movement of people triggered by climate change, a number of “managed retreat” models have been proposed as policy options, especially for densely populated urban areas in the Global South. Reviewing a case study from Mongla, a secondary city in southwestern Bangladesh, we argue that a “crisis narrative” unhelpfully informs current discourses of “climate migration”, and oversimplify complex realities, creating…
Liveability and vitality
This paper presents a mixed method, participatory exploration of liveability as a stocktaking assessment with projections for urban vitality in cities, particularly in LMIC, small cities. The paper takes as its case study research conducted in 2019 and 2020 in Mongla and Noapara, south west Bangladesh. This paper illustrates firstly, the possibilities for the concept of liveability to produce nuanced, granular understandings of how small cities s…
Overlooked cities
There is growing scholarly attention to secondary and intermediary cities as their relevance for global urban development is increasingly recognised. We call urban academics, scholars, policymakers and practitioners to situate debates on these cities critically with the notion of “overlooked cities” to understand how knowledge from such cities is produced, circulated and negotiated in urban research and practice. This commentary aims to foregroun…
Interdisciplinary perspectives on the intersections of roads, sustainable development, and disaster resilience
Natural hazard-influenced disasters, sustainable development, and roads are closely intertwined. Governments and funding agencies worldwide are increasingly focused on delivering disaster-resilient road infrastructure. However, the multifaceted, ubiquitous, and contested nature of road networks means that making them resilient to disasters is a complex task. Efforts to build resilient roads generate trade-offs against other policy goals like clim…
Humanitarian frontiering
Since 2014, humanitarian cash, vouchers, and digital transfers have grown from scattered pilot projects to a peak of 24% of all humanitarian aid distributed globally in 2022. Cash assistance programs require different and distinct relationships between aid and wider political economies than direct food aid: the removal of parallel markets for humanitarian food aid, imbrication of displaced people in local markets, negotiations and participation o…
Political science (13 works) · Geography (11 works) · Economics (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Disaster Management and Resilience (6 works) · Engineering (6 works) · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration (5 works) · Environmental planning (5 works) · Economic geography (4 works)