Who Leaves, Who Stays? Gender, Mobility and Climate Changes in India and Romania
NYU CUSP is pleased to host our annual Research Seminar Series, featuring leading voices in the growing field of urban informatics. The seminars will examine real-world challenges facing cities and urban environments around the world, with topics ranging from citizen and social sciences to smart infrastructure.
Today's topic:
How are women from vulnerable communities, impacted by the axis of environmental disasters and patterns of mobility? Addressing this question, the talk presents the findings from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Roșia Montană (Transylvania), Romania and West Bengal (Sunderban Delta), India. Integrating political ethnography conducted primarily with women and visual analysis, this work assesses patterns of movement within communities affected by complex environmental changes. In doing so, it showcases who moves, who stays, how decisions are made, and how they impact women and girls facing environmental changes.
About the speaker:
Cristina-Ioana Dragomir is a Clinical Assistant Professor in Global Liberal Studies at New York University, member of the Politics Rights and Development and Sustainably, Health and Environment concentrations. As a professor and scholar, Dragomir has taught and researched social justice, migration, and the relationship between gender and the environment at several universities, including Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, State University of New York, and Queen Mary University of London. She also consults with the United Nations, GIZ, IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic & Social Policy, and IOM. Interrogating mobility in the context of the current climate crises, her work looks at mobility as a complex process, that not only engages those who have to move due to the environmental changes, but those who are forced to stay, especially women and girls, and who are left to carry the burden of continuing to care for their communities, surviving through environmental disasters, while often lacking support from migrating partners.