Cassidy Johnson

Professor Cassidy Johnson is Professor of Urbanism and Disaster Risk Reduction at the Development Planning Unit of University College London (UCL), where she has been affiliated since 2006. Her work focuses on improving the quality of life for low-income urban communities through disaster risk reduction, post-disaster recovery, and climate change adaptation research and teaching.

Her educational background includes:

• PhD from University de Montreal (2007)
• Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Columbia University (2007-2009)
• Master of Architecture from McGill University (2002)
• Bachelor of Arts from Concordia University, Montreal (1999)

Professor Johnson's research interests center on disasters as socially-constructed phenomena and their linkage to development, emphasizing how political economy shapes our environment. She investigates the role of communities and local governments as co-producers of disaster risk responses, the importance of disaggregated data for understanding small-scale disasters in informal settlements, environmental justice in urban planning, evictions and resettlement with focus on narratives of struggle and resistance, and post-disaster housing recovery. Her work spans more than eight countries across Asia and Africa including Turkey, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Tanzania, Uganda, and Malawi.

Her research has been particularly influential in understanding post-disaster temporary housing, as demonstrated by her PhD work on housing recovery after the 1999 Earthquakes in Turkey. She has also examined urban rehabilitation in Sulukule, Istanbul, focusing on Roma communities and resistance against forced evictions. Her international collaborations include work with Natural Resources Canada on solar energy in cities and with the Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT) on missions to Turkey after the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes. Analysis of her publication trends shows consistent scholarly output addressing urban risk in the Global South, with recent work focusing on earthquake response, climate adaptation in planning education, and knowledge co-production for urban equality.

She regularly serves as advisor to major international organizations:

• UK Research Councils
• United Nations Office for Disaster Reduction
• The World Bank

As an educator, Professor Johnson leads the MSc module "Disaster Risk Reduction in Cities" and supervises PhD students on municipal disaster risk management, post-disaster recovery and reconstruction, and urban environmental risk and health. She has taught postgraduate modules since 2009, including "Post Disaster Recovery: Policies, Practices and Alternatives." Her professional activities include participation in "Frontiers of Development: Disaster Resilience" at the Royal Academy of Engineering (2020).