ECo Talks: Infrastructure and Environment in UN Peace Operations with Silvia Danielak
Earth Commons postdoctoral fellow, Silvia Danielak, will present her talk, ” Infrastructure and Environment in UN Peace Operations,” as part of the new ECo Talks series produced by the Earth Commons.
About the Speaker: Silvia Danielak is an urbanist and peace scholar, currently a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University’s Earth Commons Institute for Environment & Sustainability and incoming faculty at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Analysis. Silvia’s work centers around socio-spatial planning, especially infrastructure planning, in conflict settings and as part of peace efforts, as well as its coalition with climate and environmental efforts. She currently writes a book about infrastructure building in United Nations peace operations, and also just started a new project on conflict management around climate adaptation infrastructure in Morocco. In addition to several years of experience working in international development, she holds a PhD in urban planning from MIT and a Master in Design Studies from Harvard University.
About the Talk: Roads and bridges, health centers, and even renewable power plants: United Nations (UN) peacekeepers might be unusual but certainly not unambitious infrastructure builders. Through their engineering work, UN peace operations have a significant, long-term impact on the built environment and ecology in the places of intervention, which has remained scarcely articulated as part of peace and urban scholarship, and remains disjoint from the sustainability discourse to which peacebuilding has turned. In this talk, Dr. Danielak presents research on infrastructure building, and the ‘planning for peace’ embedded therein, in recent peace operations from Haiti to Mali and Somalia. Centering peacekeeping’s involvement in public works highlights the socio-spatial, urban and environmental aspects of peace operations that are ever more important today as the UN defines its contribution to sustainable peace and ‘climate security’.
Event Details: Light refreshments will be provided. Free and open to all. No RSVP required.
About the Series: ECo Talks are presented by the Earth Commons Fridays 11:30 am – 12:30 pm in Arrupe Hall Conference Room. ECo Talks features scholars, leaders and innovators sparking conversation, sharing knowledge, and spurring change. Learn more about the series >>
