Brianna Castro

Brianna Castro is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at Harvard University. Her research interests include the social dimensions of climate change adaptation, environmental migration, climate change mobilities, and the interplay between individuals and institutions in resilience and adaptation planning. Brianna’s dissertation project ethnographically examines the everyday experience of the changing climate, paying particular attention to adaptation decision-making embedded in sociopolitical contexts. Her dissertation focuses on three climate stressed areas of the globe: rural Colombia, coastal North Carolina, and the informal settlements in the megacity of Lagos. She does not compare these sharply different contexts, but combines the realities in each place to create a more nuanced picture of a global climate change experience.

Brianna is part of the Social Consequences of Climate Change working group at the Institute for Public Knowledge, the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, and the Flood Lab at the First Street Foundation. She has collaborated on research with partners such as The Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, and UN Women. She decenters her work through an inductive approach to her research, collaboration with practitioners, and rethinking accepted categories within her scholarship.