Governing Disaster Response in Aotearoa New Zealand – An Auckland Volcanic Field Case Study
Holly has a Master of International Law and Politics from the University of Canterbury and has been involved in several disaster law projects including a project mapping the disaster laws of Pacific nations (through the International Federation of Red Cross), and a project investigating the 2019 rescEU mechanism and its relationship to supranationalism (funded by QuakCoRE). Holly is also assisting Prof John Hopkins and Dr Toni Collins with their Regulation for Resilience project, alongside her work as a law intern with the Canterbury Community Law Centre.
Holly’s PhD is titled ‘Governing Disaster Response in Aotearoa New Zealand – An Auckland Volcanic Field Case Study’. The project is co-funded by the Determining Volcanic Risk in Auckland (DEVORA) research programme. Holly will utilise volcanic eruption scenarios developed by DEVORA, assess the ability of the current structures to deal with an Auckland Volcanic Field eruption and consider how such structures could be further developed to increase their resilience. Holly is based at the University of Canterbury and is working within the Urban programme, specifically the Pathways to Urban Resilience project led by Prof Jan Lindsay.
Since formally starting her PhD journey in February 2021, Holly has focused on establishing the groundwork for her project. This has included working with her supervisors to determine the scope and structure of the project and completing a draft of her first section focusing on why law matters. She is now drafting a second section looking at why disasters matter.
In July 2021 Holly presented her topic at the Aotearoa Branch of the Australasian Law Academics Association conference, held at the University of Canterbury. This encompassed both a 5-minute oral presentation and a poster. Holly was also one of three finalists in the 2021 QuakeCoRE student lightning talks, and went on to present her lightning talk at the online QuakeCoRE annual meeting in December 2021.
Her PhD project is supervised by Profs John Hopkins and Tom Wilson, both of the University of Canterbury.
