Christine Eriksen
Biographic Data
| ID | 3719103 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christine Eriksen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christine |
| FAMILY NAME | Eriksen |
| SIGNATURE | ERIKSEN C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wollongong |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2906-9680 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 185 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 32 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Second Shift in Mountain Guiding and Avalanche Work
This article examines perceptions of risk and risk management effectiveness among 2SLGBTQ+, women, BIPOC, or trauma-affected members of the avalanche and mountain guiding profession. It draws on 17 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted in Canada, USA, Switzerland and France within a profession that is overwhelmingly White, cis-gender, hetero, and male. This study critiques traditional approaches to risk, and offers a new definition of int…
Strengthening community disaster resilience in uncertain times
This paper examines how community groups develop resilience over time through influencing and interacting with different societal levels throughout the phases of the disaster management cycle: prevention, preparation, response, and recovery. This provides an opportunity for a more insightful and holistic understanding of the factors involved in resilience. The macro/governmental level shapes governance of bushfire management and resources; the mi…
A Reparative Paradigm for Thinking With Disasters
The field of disaster studies remains largely committed to a modernist spatio‐temporal imaginary that persistently emphasises the singularity of a given disaster and often fails to account for the broader set of affairs in which disasters are situated and shaped, in turn leading to circumspect, uninventive and ineffective policy outcomes. In light of these trends, we argue for a paradigm shift in disaster research. In this commentary, we aim to a…
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Geoviolence
Recognition that environmental degradation is mostly driven by human activity is widely supported by interdisciplinary scholarship. However, the terminology and conceptual frameworks used to describe such socioenvironmental interconnectedness remain diverse, reflecting differing theoretical perspectives and disciplinary traditions. In this commentary, we engage with the concept of ‘geoviolence’—defined as human actions that generate, exacerbate o…
From rigidity traps towards reparative disaster governance and management
Governing layers of shifting sands
In this paper, we use a spatiotemporal axis of analysis to unpack the governance and management of two pressing yet diverse types of subterranean hazards: earthquakes and nuclear waste repositories. In each case, decades, centuries, or millennia of slow movement run up against the fast movement of disastrous moments. These contrasting spatiotemporal relationships are emblematic of the different temporal and spatial horizons researchers, scientist…
Feeling safe enough
Making cyber security more resilient
How can a focus on socio-technical vulnerability and uncertainty make cyber security more resilient? In this article, we provide a conceptual discussion of how to increase cyber resilience. First, we show how cyber security and resilience thinking co-evolved through their connection to critical infrastructures, and how the ensuing dominant technical focus inevitably always falls short due to the diverse societal values that underpin their critica…
Engaging with the home-in-ruins
In the aftermath of a firestorm, many survivors will spend time with the ruins of their homes, fossicking through the rubble or simply being present with the transformed space. Through a series of oral history interviews with survivors of the 2003 Canberra firestorm in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), this paper investigates ruined homes as spaces imbued with memory–of the fire itself, of life before the fires, and of a once imagined futur…
House and contents underinsurance
Advancing disaster geographies
Despite growing awareness and research into experiences of gender and sexual minorities - also known as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual and other identities (LGBTQIA+) - their needs and capacities are often overlooked in crisis response and disaster risk reduction. LGBTQIA+ peoples' vulnerability is shaped by social marginalisation, discrimination, and stigma, and exacerbated by dominant value systems and Western heteronor…
Dilemmas, decision‐making, and disasters
Increasing numbers of households are impacted by disasters due to population growth, increasing development in higher risk areas, and climate change. While emergency management in Australia aims to reduce quantifiable losses, lived disaster and recovery experiences are relatively mute, with implications for mitigation and post‐disaster support. This paper draws on findings from a research project that set out to examine the role of insurance in h…
Untangling insurance, rebuilding, and wellbeing in bushfire recovery
Home and contents insurance is framed as key to Australia's national strategy for disaster resilience. Despite the perceived importance of financial indemnity, ambiguity characterises the ways in which it facilitates both short‐ and long‐term everyday household recovery when disaster strikes. Addressing such ambiguity, this article explores how insurance impacts upon households' capacities to rebuild and recover after disastrous bushfire. In‐dept…
When insurance and goodwill are not enough
Home and contents insurance is integral to household and community resilience against disasters. Yet many households are underinsured. While causes for underinsurance have been widely researched, changes to Australian building regulations in the last decade has established a new source of insurance miscalculations. Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) ratings can inflate rebuilding costs by 20% or more, yet BAL ratings remain obfuscated to homeowners and …
Negotiating adversity with humour
This paper examines humour as an emergent theme within a long-term study of the gendered terrain of wildfire management. It analyses a set of semi-structured interviews that the study utilised to facilitate in-depth conversations with firefighter women about everyday gender relations, politics and practices within the New South Wales National Parks and Wildfire Service, Australia. The narrative analysis unpacks the dual function of humour as an e…
Research Ethics, Trauma and Self-care
In this Research Note, I reflect on researcher trauma in the discipline of geography, and explore ways to build a framework for researcher self-care by facilitating conversations about mental health in collaboration with Human Research Ethics Committees, Professional and Organisational Development Services and Workplace Health and Safety units
The Affluence-Vulnerability Interface
This paper examines vulnerability in the context of affluence and privilege. It focuses on the 1991 Oakland Hills Firestorm in California, USA to examine long-term lived experiences of the disaster. Vulnerability is typically understood as a condition besetting poor and marginalized communities. Frequently ignored in these discussions are the experiences of those who live in more affluent areas. This paper seeks to more closely explain vulnerabil…
Embodied uncertainty
In this paper, we examine the concept of embodied uncertainty by exploring multiple dimensions of uncertainty in the context of risks associated with extreme natural hazards. We highlight a need for greater recognition, particularly by disaster management and response agencies, of uncertainty as a subjective experience for those living at risk. Embodied uncertainty is distinguished from objective uncertainty by the nature of its internalisation a…
Gendered Dynamics of Wildland Firefighting in Australia
This article examines the gendered dynamics of wildland firefighting through analysis of employment statistics and in-depth interviews with employees of the National Parks and Wildlife Service in New South Wales, Australia. The statistics suggest increased gender equality for women following the affirmative gender politics of the 1990s in a previously male-dominated workplace. However, we argue these statistics mask how some patterns of practice …
Gendered responses to the 2009 B lack S aturday bushfires in V ictoria, A ustralia
This paper presents findings from a gendered analysis of resident responses to the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires (wildfires) in Victoria, Australia. One hundred and seventy‐three people lost their lives in the bushfires and more than 2000 houses were destroyed. Previous research on Black Saturday has largely focused on issues of resident preparedness and response, with limited consideration of the role of gender in household decisions and actions…
Geographical Fire Research in A ustralia
‘You live in the bush. You live by the rules of the bush, and that's it.’ These were the reflective words of Mrs Dunlop upon seeing the blackened rubble of her home, which made headline news the morning after the first, and most destructive, fire front tore through the Blue Mountains in New South Wales on 17 October 2013 (Partridge and Levy, 2013). While seemingly a simple statement, it goes right to the heart of heated public and political debat…
The Retention, Revival, and Subjugation of Indigenous Fire Knowledge through Agency Fire Fighting in Eastern Australia and California
This article explores the potential impact of training and employment with wildfire management agencies on the retention of Indigenous fire knowledge. It focuses on the comparative knowledge and experiences of Indigenous Elders, cultural practitioners, and land stewards in connection with “modern” political constructs of fire in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia, and California in the United States of America. This article emphasises the …
Gendered Risk Engagement
Building on an identified need for gender-sensitive approaches to bushfire risk engagement, this paper examines outreach initiatives specifically targeting women's bushfire awareness and preparedness in southeast Australia. The results of an online survey, together with two workshops with community engagement staff and volunteers from rural fire services, convey perceived aids and obstacles for engaging women. Efforts at engaging women with bushf…
Gender and Wildfire
In pursuit of lifestyle change, affordable property, and proximity to nature, people from all walks of life are moving to the wildland-urban interface. Tragic wildfires and a predicted increase in high fire danger weather with climate change have triggered concern for the safety of such amenity-led migrants in wildfire-prone landscapes. This book examines wildfire awareness and preparedness amongst women, men, households, communities and agencies…
Gender and Wildfire
In pursuit of lifestyle change, affordable property, and proximity to nature, people from all walks of life are moving to the wildland-urban interface. Tragic wildfires and a predicted increase in high fire danger weather with climate change have triggered concern for the safety of such amenity-led migrants in wildfire-prone landscapes. This book examines wildfire awareness and preparedness amongst women, men, households, communities and agencies…
Bushfire and everyday life
Why do they burn the 'bush'? Fire, rural livelihoods, and conservation in Zambia
Despite the historical importance of fire as a savanna land management tool, much controversy still surrounds discussions on anthropogenic fire utilization and the sustainability of indigenous land management practices in African savannas. This controversy is arguably a result of a discord between official fire policies and actual indigenous fire practices - a discord based on a gap in existing knowledge of, and a lack of informed literature on, …
Wildfire preparedness, community cohesion and social–ecological systems
The gendered dimensions of bushfire in changing rural landscapes in Australia
Embodied uncertainty
In this paper, we examine the concept of embodied uncertainty by exploring multiple dimensions of uncertainty in the context of risks associated with extreme natural hazards. We highlight a need for greater recognition, particularly by disaster management and response agencies, of uncertainty as a subjective experience for those living at risk. Embodied uncertainty is distinguished from objective uncertainty by the nature of its internalisation a…
The Retention, Revival, and Subjugation of Indigenous Fire Knowledge through Agency Fire Fighting in Eastern Australia and California
This article explores the potential impact of training and employment with wildfire management agencies on the retention of Indigenous fire knowledge. It focuses on the comparative knowledge and experiences of Indigenous Elders, cultural practitioners, and land stewards in connection with “modern” political constructs of fire in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia, and California in the United States of America. This article emphasises the …
The Affluence-Vulnerability Interface
This paper examines vulnerability in the context of affluence and privilege. It focuses on the 1991 Oakland Hills Firestorm in California, USA to examine long-term lived experiences of the disaster. Vulnerability is typically understood as a condition besetting poor and marginalized communities. Frequently ignored in these discussions are the experiences of those who live in more affluent areas. This paper seeks to more closely explain vulnerabil…
Engaging with the home-in-ruins
In the aftermath of a firestorm, many survivors will spend time with the ruins of their homes, fossicking through the rubble or simply being present with the transformed space. Through a series of oral history interviews with survivors of the 2003 Canberra firestorm in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), this paper investigates ruined homes as spaces imbued with memory–of the fire itself, of life before the fires, and of a once imagined futur…
Gendered Dynamics of Wildland Firefighting in Australia
This article examines the gendered dynamics of wildland firefighting through analysis of employment statistics and in-depth interviews with employees of the National Parks and Wildlife Service in New South Wales, Australia. The statistics suggest increased gender equality for women following the affirmative gender politics of the 1990s in a previously male-dominated workplace. However, we argue these statistics mask how some patterns of practice …
Research Ethics, Trauma and Self-care
In this Research Note, I reflect on researcher trauma in the discipline of geography, and explore ways to build a framework for researcher self-care by facilitating conversations about mental health in collaboration with Human Research Ethics Committees, Professional and Organisational Development Services and Workplace Health and Safety units
Gendered responses to the 2009 B lack S aturday bushfires in V ictoria, A ustralia
This paper presents findings from a gendered analysis of resident responses to the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires (wildfires) in Victoria, Australia. One hundred and seventy‐three people lost their lives in the bushfires and more than 2000 houses were destroyed. Previous research on Black Saturday has largely focused on issues of resident preparedness and response, with limited consideration of the role of gender in household decisions and actions…
Untangling insurance, rebuilding, and wellbeing in bushfire recovery
Home and contents insurance is framed as key to Australia's national strategy for disaster resilience. Despite the perceived importance of financial indemnity, ambiguity characterises the ways in which it facilitates both short‐ and long‐term everyday household recovery when disaster strikes. Addressing such ambiguity, this article explores how insurance impacts upon households' capacities to rebuild and recover after disastrous bushfire. In‐dept…
Gendered Risk Engagement
Building on an identified need for gender-sensitive approaches to bushfire risk engagement, this paper examines outreach initiatives specifically targeting women's bushfire awareness and preparedness in southeast Australia. The results of an online survey, together with two workshops with community engagement staff and volunteers from rural fire services, convey perceived aids and obstacles for engaging women. Efforts at engaging women with bushf…
Women in leadership
Karin Klenke, Bingley, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2011, 301 pp., $74.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-85724-561-8 Leadership scenarios and paradoxes – past, present and future – form the basis of K
Making cyber security more resilient
How can a focus on socio-technical vulnerability and uncertainty make cyber security more resilient? In this article, we provide a conceptual discussion of how to increase cyber resilience. First, we show how cyber security and resilience thinking co-evolved through their connection to critical infrastructures, and how the ensuing dominant technical focus inevitably always falls short due to the diverse societal values that underpin their critica…
When insurance and goodwill are not enough
Home and contents insurance is integral to household and community resilience against disasters. Yet many households are underinsured. While causes for underinsurance have been widely researched, changes to Australian building regulations in the last decade has established a new source of insurance miscalculations. Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) ratings can inflate rebuilding costs by 20% or more, yet BAL ratings remain obfuscated to homeowners and …
Governing layers of shifting sands
In this paper, we use a spatiotemporal axis of analysis to unpack the governance and management of two pressing yet diverse types of subterranean hazards: earthquakes and nuclear waste repositories. In each case, decades, centuries, or millennia of slow movement run up against the fast movement of disastrous moments. These contrasting spatiotemporal relationships are emblematic of the different temporal and spatial horizons researchers, scientist…
Advancing disaster geographies
Despite growing awareness and research into experiences of gender and sexual minorities - also known as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual and other identities (LGBTQIA+) - their needs and capacities are often overlooked in crisis response and disaster risk reduction. LGBTQIA+ peoples' vulnerability is shaped by social marginalisation, discrimination, and stigma, and exacerbated by dominant value systems and Western heteronor…
Negotiating adversity with humour
This paper examines humour as an emergent theme within a long-term study of the gendered terrain of wildfire management. It analyses a set of semi-structured interviews that the study utilised to facilitate in-depth conversations with firefighter women about everyday gender relations, politics and practices within the New South Wales National Parks and Wildfire Service, Australia. The narrative analysis unpacks the dual function of humour as an e…
Engaging with the (Un)familiar
Field trips have long been central to geography, but have been subject to assessment of the role of the ‘field’ in teaching. At the same time, academics face barriers to running field trips. Distance education and enhanced educational access for non-metropolitan students represented such an obstacle at an Australian university. These obstacles were taken as an opportunity to draw on the regional nature of the students and staff to enhance teachin…
Trial by Fire
This paper considers the issues of research ‘relevance’ and ‘use’ to reflect upon a cultural geography research project on bushfire that did not begin with any specific aim of being useful to policy makers but which has garnered considerable and ongoing interest from a broad audience. It provides an example of how the integration of quantitative and qualitative research methods and data can enhance research into cultural aspects of natural hazard…
Why do they burn the 'bush'? Fire, rural livelihoods, and conservation in Zambia
Despite the historical importance of fire as a savanna land management tool, much controversy still surrounds discussions on anthropogenic fire utilization and the sustainability of indigenous land management practices in African savannas. This controversy is arguably a result of a discord between official fire policies and actual indigenous fire practices - a discord based on a gap in existing knowledge of, and a lack of informed literature on, …
The gendered dimensions of bushfire in changing rural landscapes in Australia
Bushfire and everyday life
Engaging with the (Un)familiar
Field trips have long been central to geography, but have been subject to assessment of the role of the ‘field’ in teaching. At the same time, academics face barriers to running field trips. Distance education and enhanced educational access for non-metropolitan students represented such an obstacle at an Australian university. These obstacles were taken as an opportunity to draw on the regional nature of the students and staff to enhance teachin…
Trial by Fire
This paper considers the issues of research ‘relevance’ and ‘use’ to reflect upon a cultural geography research project on bushfire that did not begin with any specific aim of being useful to policy makers but which has garnered considerable and ongoing interest from a broad audience. It provides an example of how the integration of quantitative and qualitative research methods and data can enhance research into cultural aspects of natural hazard…
Women in leadership
Karin Klenke, Bingley, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2011, 301 pp., $74.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-85724-561-8 Leadership scenarios and paradoxes – past, present and future – form the basis of K
Gender and Wildfire
In pursuit of lifestyle change, affordable property, and proximity to nature, people from all walks of life are moving to the wildland-urban interface. Tragic wildfires and a predicted increase in high fire danger weather with climate change have triggered concern for the safety of such amenity-led migrants in wildfire-prone landscapes. This book examines wildfire awareness and preparedness amongst women, men, households, communities and agencies…
Gender and Wildfire
In pursuit of lifestyle change, affordable property, and proximity to nature, people from all walks of life are moving to the wildland-urban interface. Tragic wildfires and a predicted increase in high fire danger weather with climate change have triggered concern for the safety of such amenity-led migrants in wildfire-prone landscapes. This book examines wildfire awareness and preparedness amongst women, men, households, communities and agencies…
Wildfire preparedness, community cohesion and social–ecological systems
Geographical Fire Research in A ustralia
‘You live in the bush. You live by the rules of the bush, and that's it.’ These were the reflective words of Mrs Dunlop upon seeing the blackened rubble of her home, which made headline news the morning after the first, and most destructive, fire front tore through the Blue Mountains in New South Wales on 17 October 2013 (Partridge and Levy, 2013). While seemingly a simple statement, it goes right to the heart of heated public and political debat…
The Retention, Revival, and Subjugation of Indigenous Fire Knowledge through Agency Fire Fighting in Eastern Australia and California
This article explores the potential impact of training and employment with wildfire management agencies on the retention of Indigenous fire knowledge. It focuses on the comparative knowledge and experiences of Indigenous Elders, cultural practitioners, and land stewards in connection with “modern” political constructs of fire in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia, and California in the United States of America. This article emphasises the …
Gendered Risk Engagement
Building on an identified need for gender-sensitive approaches to bushfire risk engagement, this paper examines outreach initiatives specifically targeting women's bushfire awareness and preparedness in southeast Australia. The results of an online survey, together with two workshops with community engagement staff and volunteers from rural fire services, convey perceived aids and obstacles for engaging women. Efforts at engaging women with bushf…
Embodied uncertainty
In this paper, we examine the concept of embodied uncertainty by exploring multiple dimensions of uncertainty in the context of risks associated with extreme natural hazards. We highlight a need for greater recognition, particularly by disaster management and response agencies, of uncertainty as a subjective experience for those living at risk. Embodied uncertainty is distinguished from objective uncertainty by the nature of its internalisation a…
Gendered Dynamics of Wildland Firefighting in Australia
This article examines the gendered dynamics of wildland firefighting through analysis of employment statistics and in-depth interviews with employees of the National Parks and Wildlife Service in New South Wales, Australia. The statistics suggest increased gender equality for women following the affirmative gender politics of the 1990s in a previously male-dominated workplace. However, we argue these statistics mask how some patterns of practice …
Gendered responses to the 2009 B lack S aturday bushfires in V ictoria, A ustralia
This paper presents findings from a gendered analysis of resident responses to the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires (wildfires) in Victoria, Australia. One hundred and seventy‐three people lost their lives in the bushfires and more than 2000 houses were destroyed. Previous research on Black Saturday has largely focused on issues of resident preparedness and response, with limited consideration of the role of gender in household decisions and actions…
Research Ethics, Trauma and Self-care
In this Research Note, I reflect on researcher trauma in the discipline of geography, and explore ways to build a framework for researcher self-care by facilitating conversations about mental health in collaboration with Human Research Ethics Committees, Professional and Organisational Development Services and Workplace Health and Safety units
The Affluence-Vulnerability Interface
This paper examines vulnerability in the context of affluence and privilege. It focuses on the 1991 Oakland Hills Firestorm in California, USA to examine long-term lived experiences of the disaster. Vulnerability is typically understood as a condition besetting poor and marginalized communities. Frequently ignored in these discussions are the experiences of those who live in more affluent areas. This paper seeks to more closely explain vulnerabil…
Negotiating adversity with humour
This paper examines humour as an emergent theme within a long-term study of the gendered terrain of wildfire management. It analyses a set of semi-structured interviews that the study utilised to facilitate in-depth conversations with firefighter women about everyday gender relations, politics and practices within the New South Wales National Parks and Wildfire Service, Australia. The narrative analysis unpacks the dual function of humour as an e…
When insurance and goodwill are not enough
Home and contents insurance is integral to household and community resilience against disasters. Yet many households are underinsured. While causes for underinsurance have been widely researched, changes to Australian building regulations in the last decade has established a new source of insurance miscalculations. Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) ratings can inflate rebuilding costs by 20% or more, yet BAL ratings remain obfuscated to homeowners and …
Dilemmas, decision‐making, and disasters
Increasing numbers of households are impacted by disasters due to population growth, increasing development in higher risk areas, and climate change. While emergency management in Australia aims to reduce quantifiable losses, lived disaster and recovery experiences are relatively mute, with implications for mitigation and post‐disaster support. This paper draws on findings from a research project that set out to examine the role of insurance in h…
Untangling insurance, rebuilding, and wellbeing in bushfire recovery
Home and contents insurance is framed as key to Australia's national strategy for disaster resilience. Despite the perceived importance of financial indemnity, ambiguity characterises the ways in which it facilitates both short‐ and long‐term everyday household recovery when disaster strikes. Addressing such ambiguity, this article explores how insurance impacts upon households' capacities to rebuild and recover after disastrous bushfire. In‐dept…
House and contents underinsurance
Advancing disaster geographies
Despite growing awareness and research into experiences of gender and sexual minorities - also known as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual and other identities (LGBTQIA+) - their needs and capacities are often overlooked in crisis response and disaster risk reduction. LGBTQIA+ peoples' vulnerability is shaped by social marginalisation, discrimination, and stigma, and exacerbated by dominant value systems and Western heteronor…
Making cyber security more resilient
How can a focus on socio-technical vulnerability and uncertainty make cyber security more resilient? In this article, we provide a conceptual discussion of how to increase cyber resilience. First, we show how cyber security and resilience thinking co-evolved through their connection to critical infrastructures, and how the ensuing dominant technical focus inevitably always falls short due to the diverse societal values that underpin their critica…
Engaging with the home-in-ruins
In the aftermath of a firestorm, many survivors will spend time with the ruins of their homes, fossicking through the rubble or simply being present with the transformed space. Through a series of oral history interviews with survivors of the 2003 Canberra firestorm in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), this paper investigates ruined homes as spaces imbued with memory–of the fire itself, of life before the fires, and of a once imagined futur…
Disaster Management and Resilience (22 works) · Political science (19 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Geography (13 works) · Fire effects on ecosystems (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Flood Risk Assessment and Management (8 works) · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Archaeology (6 works)