Dr Ute Kelly

Research

Against the backdrop of the converging ecological, economic and social challenges we now face, I am interested in exploring the communicative and collaborative dimensions of resilience, the relationships between people and the places in which they find themselves, and approaches to enhancing resilience at different levels and in a range of contexts. This has included a grounded exploration of discourses of 'resilience', work on local food initiatives, and field research exploring community-based responses to the Boxing Day 2015 floods in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. Currently, I am involved in a three-year action research project commissioned by the Environment Agency for England and Natural Resources Wales that has been exploring how to engage communities at risk of increased flooding and coastal change in the UK in difficult conversations around longer-term adaptation challenges. Work on this project (with Rhys Kelly and Icarus) began with an extensive evidence review that identified a number of engagement challenges and potential approaches. Following this, our work with two pilot locations has included designing a set of tools to assess and enhance the readiness of professionals, stakeholders and communities to engage in critical conversations around climate adaptation. All of this work has been disseminated among relevant communities of practice. Currently, we are working on several spin-off projects, including a readiness assessment process for the government-funded Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme and, with HEIF funding, a role play simulation for UK coastal contexts.

As part of my own reflective practice, I have also been engaged in research around questions of pedagogy. This includes several co-authored pieces (with Rhys Kelly) on the implications of climate change and ecological crisis for our field and experiments with opening up difficult conversations around these issues with our students. With a group of Peace Studies alumni, I have engaged in a project exploring how we might encourage more honest explorations of challenging dynamics of privilege, difference and otherness within and beyond the University. At the moment, I am finalizing a book chapter reflecting on recent teaching for an edited collection on post/critical peace education, based at the Cambridge Peace and Education Research Group. In both format and content, this piece of work is an exploration of emerging interests in creative and trauma-informed pedagogic practices that I am hoping to develop further, both via my own teaching and through associated research and creative writing.