Lucila Carbonell

Lucila’s interests are around urban development planning, gender and social justice. Her current work focuses on post-disaster recovery and gender in the urban context. The objective of the research is to understand and further develop the concept of Shelter ‘Self-Recovery’ after disaster by learning from the experiences of women in vulnerable situations who were affected by the April 2015 earthquakes.

Having trained as an architect and worked internationally in commercial practice for over a decade, Lucila completed the MSc in Urban Development Planning at the DPU in 2015. Her thesis analysed the practices of the Federations of Urban Poor as a model for development. In 2015 Lucila enrolled in the Engineering Doctorate program at UCL’s Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering Department. She completed the MRes in Urban Sustainability and Resilience in 2016 and conducted research on gender and construction in urban and rural locations of Nepal that had been affected by the earthquake.

With both her supervisors at the Development Planning Unit, Lucila is currently based in the DPU. Lucila is associated with CARE International UK as industry partner, where she works with the Humanitarian Shelter Team one day a week.

Title: Recovering after Disaster: Women’s Perspectives on Shelter Self-Recovery.

Key words: Self-Recovery, Gender, Vulnerability, Nepal, Reconstruction, Shelter, Disaster