Susan Cutter, PhD, University of South Carolina, discusses the disproportionate impact of risk, hazards, and disasters on socially differentiated groups whether based on gender, age, race/ethnicity, or social status has been part of the broader disasters research field for nearly half a century now. As a concept, social vulnerability transcends many social science disciplines, but my perspective is engaged with social and spatial inequality and its variability between places. This talk takes a retrospective view of the concept of social vulnerability in tracing origins in hazards and disasters research, its quantification, and operational use for emergency preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation. The evolution of the Social Vulnerability Index (or SoVI®) is used as an example. Lessons learned and future needs, uses, and improvements in social vulnerability metrics are briefly described.

Yifan Xu, "Resilient Infrastructure: Water, Buildings, and Communication"

Paul Adams & Dalia Vasquez, "Latino Intergenerational Communication and Attitudes Regarding Climate Change"

Gisel Garza, "A Community Forest in the Heart of the Rio Grande Valley: A Centerpiece for Environmental Education"

Eric Abelson, "The Pressing Ecological Need for Autonomous Data Collection: A Central Texas Case Study"

Andrea Contina, "Estimating Avian Habitat Occupancy Patterns From the World's Largest Citizen Science Database"

Juliet Whitsett, "A Synthesis of Community Arts and Science Communication"

Light bites and coffee.

Environmental change is commonly framed in scientific terms (Dryzek, Norgaard, and Schlosberg, 2011). While scientific ways of knowing are essential for understanding this wicked problem, awareness is not enough to encourage action on environmental change (Allum et al., 2008; Moser & Dilling, 2007). Furthermore, an overemphasis on scientific and technological fixes may obstruct climate change solutions that are both effective and socially just. Engaging with environmental justice through our bodies and emotions may allow us to use the body as a site for making meaning and imagining the future (Dawson, 2018). In this workshop, we will explore how Theatre of the Oppressed allow us to collectively explore our struggles around environmental justice. This workshop will serve as an experiential discussion of techniques we use in our ongoing project Embodying Counternarratives of Environmental Justice. Theatre of the Oppressed is a form of interactive theater used in social change work. This beginner-friendly workshop invites participants to collectively process our struggles with environmentally justice emotionally, intellectually, and artistically through Image Theatre. Using the aesthetic, scholarly, and lived experience expertise of these participants, we will explore and make visible our current struggles around environmental justice with our Planet Texas 2050 community. By making and activating these images, we hope to create a platform for emergent insights into how to move from our current struggles to our collectively-imagined ideals. The workshop will begin with games and exercises designed to introduce participants to one another, build trust in the room, and have participants begin using their bodies to make images. Then, we will divide into groups and collaboratively form images of our struggles with environmental justice. The workshop will end with a brief performance in which the facilitator (Joker) will activate each of the images and invite the other participants into an embodied dialogue with each image.

Workshop by Nic Bennett, PhD Candidate in Media Engagement, UT Austin

Note To Attendees: Please wear clothes that are comfortable around in as this will be an active, participatory, physical workshop.

This interactive round table session walks participants through the youth participants' experience in assuming agency over environmental justice as they reclaim Indigenous identities every summer at the ICI summer youth arts encounter. Facilitators will share video of youth participating in the arts program and share research findings from 10 years of the encounter. Participants will have opportunities to listen, respond and ask questions about the work.

Maria Rocha, Indigenous Cultures Institute

Marial Quezada, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, UT Austin

Roxanne Schroeder-Arce, Department of Theatre and Dance, UT Austin

Jim Walker, The President's Sustainability Steering Committee: A Framework for Campus Emissions

Adam Rabinowitz, "Mobility and Migration on the Roman Danube Frontier: Multidisciplinary Approaches to a Roman Burial Ground"

Jiayu Sun, "Community Resilience in a Cascading Disaster: Adapting a Web of Communication Resources to a Oscillating Online/Offline Hyperlocal Context"

Xinxin Sui, "Urban Precipitation Anomalies for Global Cities"

Guilherme Eliote, "Circularity in the Built Environment: Design for Disassembly and Adaptation"

Neha Donthineni, "Tracing Cotton Threads: Understanding Notions of Sustainability Across the Global Organic Cotton Supply Chain

Daniel Oliveira, "Synergies Between the Construction Industry Institute and Planet Texas 2050 in the Design and Construction of Capital Projects"

As blackouts associated with 2021's Winter Storm Uri proved, Texas and its grid face pressures unlike anywhere else in the country. Come learn about how the energy system in Texas works and explore how the climate crisis is changing (and may keep changing) power generation, transmission and consumption in our Texas homes, schools and offices. This event is a co-production with KUT and its award-winning podcast "The Disconnect" and part of the 2023 Texas Science Festival.

This event has limited seating offered on a first-come-first-serve basis. To attend virtually, RSVP on the Texas Science Festival website.