12:00 – 1:00pm, Wed 16 September 2026, online
Speaker: Professor Gina Yannitell Reinhardt, ARISE, University of Essex
UK coastal communities offer cultural, economic, and social diversity to the country, yet exhibit lower levels of health, wellbeing, and income compared to their inland counterparts. These communities are now at risk from climate-related hazards such flooding and sea-level rise, as well as threats to infrastructure, transportation, and economic and social wellbeing. Though multiple national initiatives to help build resilience in these communities exist, few coastal residents feel they have the opportunity to take a meaningful role in resilience building efforts.
This talk will:
- Highlight the challenges to resilience faced by coastal communities in the UK
- Present a new, transdisciplinary definition of resilience that focuses on relationships between people and nature
- Introduce three types of resilience-building projects being explored and tested in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Kent
- Consider a variety of methods to test impact on resilience from such projects moving forward
ARISE is funded as part of the £14.8m Resilient Coastal Communities and Seas Programme. It is an inclusive collaboration among: local, regional, and national authorities; coastal residents, heritage groups and people who care about UK coasts; and experts in policy analysis, cultural engagement, creative practice, health sciences, biological sciences, computer science, pollution management, disaster studies, environmental sciences, economics, and geography. Over the course of five years, the project team is working with local stakeholders to design and test different ‘interventions’, or ways of tackling difficult and long-standing problems. The project aims to create a powerful and practical toolkit which local councils and other organisations can use to address the challenges facing our coast.
The webinar includes a Q&A, which will be chaired by the Coast-R Network’s Professor Stuart McLelland.
The webinar will take place via teams. Follow the link below to register and join:
Meet the Speakers
Professor Gina Yannitell Reinhardt
Gina Yannitell Reinhardt is a political scientist and Professor of Government at the University of Essex. Her research has broadly focussed on how people make decisions without certainty, particularly people who govern hazards and manage disasters and emergencies.
She has provided expert advice on stakeholder values assessments and survey experimental design to Defra, Cefas, local Fire and Rescue Services, the United Nations, and the UK House of Commons. Gina sits on the UK National Decade Committee for the UN Decade of Ocean Science.
She currently leads the £3 million UKRI project ‘Advancing Resilience and Innovation for a Sustainable Environment’, a transdisciplinary project devoted to presenting resilience impact in UK coastal communities and policy advice on how to do so.
Chair – Professor Stuart McLelland
Stuart McLelland is a co-lead on the Coast-R Network and Professor of Water Science at the University of Hull, where he is also Deputy Director of the Energy and Environment Institute.
Stuart’s research focuses on physical modelling of flow processes and sediment transport dynamics. His main interests are in river dynamics, but sediment and water are everywhere so he works across a range of scales and also studies estuarine and coastal environments. Stuart manages research in the Total Environment Simulator (TES) which is a world-class experimental facility, operated by the University of Hull. The TES is designed for modelling environmental fluid and sediment dynamics across with flow, waves and rainfall in conjunction with a suite of laser and acoustic measurement equipment.
Stuart leads fieldwork teaching on volcanic geomorphology in Tenerife which he has been involved with for 20 years and he manages and delivers MSc teaching programmes for the Energy and Environment Institute.
