New series

Resilience Matters webinar series

Name: Resilience Matters
Start: 0001-01-01
End: 0001-01-01
Location: National

Explore disaster risk reduction and resilience

The Resilience Matters webinar series will focus on systems, environments and human factors that intersect to influence the varying levels of risk, harm and equity that people experience before, during and after a disaster.

Presenters from a variety of research, government and community backgrounds will be invited to provide their insights and perspectives as we seek to understand how we can reduce harm in these systems to reduce disaster risk and build resilience.

Throughout the series, we will build on these foundational concepts. Everyone is very welcome, whether you are an experienced practitioner or are new to these concepts, or somewhere in between.

Webinar six: Disasters, inequality, and social vulnerability: Building inclusive resilience

Wednesday 18 February 2026

AIDR welcomes Bridget Tehan to lead a person-centred conversation about the intersection between disasters, inequality, and social vulnerability, and what we need to understand and action to build inclusive resilience.

Disasters are social as well as natural events: In Australia, hazards like bushfires, floods, and heatwaves interact with existing inequalities (including poverty, disability, gender, ethnicity, and health). This increases the likelihood of disaster impacts being unevenly distributed and experienced, especially for groups that are already disadvantaged.

Social vulnerability amplifies harm before, during, and after disasters: Limited housing choice, poor-quality housing, lack of insurance, health and mobility barriers, and reduced access to information make preparation, evacuation, and recovery significantly harder for socially vulnerable populations.

Inclusive, equity-focused disaster resilience saves lives: Addressing structural disadvantage, recognising intersectionality, and co-designing disaster planning with diverse communities leads to fairer, more effective, and more sustainable disaster risk reduction outcomes.

Guest Speaker:

Bridget Tehan

Senior Advisor, Humanitarian Diplomacy,
Australian Red Cross

Bridget Tehan works to provide advocacy, sector convening, and thought leadership. Bridget has more than 15 years’ experience in emergency management and disaster resilience policy and practice. She has significant expertise in community resilience, including in strengths, needs, and priorities of people who may be at greater risk before, during and after emergencies, as well as their needs in the mitigation, transition and adaptation to climate change. Bridget also has expertise in the role of community, social service and not for profit organisations in emergencies and disasters at local, grass roots and strategic levels.

Moderator:

John Richardson

Executive Director, Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience (AIDR)

Resilience Matters webinar resources

Includes webinar notes, speaker information, recordings and additional resources

Webinar 5 - 12 November 2025 - The ethical premise of disaster management leadership

AIDR welcomed Dr Mark Crosweller to guide us through an exploration of the links between vulnerability, resilience and ethics. Mark will discuss how we all become vulnerable in times of catastrophic disaster and how we can reframe that vulnerability from harmfulness to relationality.

The webinar will then explore how certain political discourses and rhetoric separate leaders from their communities and how we might reframe resilience to be more inclusive and relational. The webinar will conclude by exploring the critical importance of ethics such as trust and compassion in leadership throughout the disaster management continuum.

Guest Speaker:

Dr Mark Crosweller
Director, Ethical Intelligence Pty Ltd

Mark has over 40 years of experience in crisis, national security, and emergency management, leading major strategic reform in governance, strategy, policy, operations, and capability.

Between 2012-2020 as Director General Emergency Management Australia and Head of the National Resilience Taskforce, Mark was responsible for briefing the Prime Minister and Cabinet on disaster management, and providing strategic policy advice on climate and disaster risk reduction and resilience. From March 2020-June 2025, Mark was a Senior Advisor and International Luminary to KPMG advising on disaster management, resilience, and leadership ethics.

Concurrently and continuing, Mark is the Founder and Director of Ethical Intelligence; Distinguished Advisor to the National Security College - Australian National University; and published author. Mark's ongoing research interest is in relational leadership ethics in senior executive leadership within the private sector, public service, national security, and disaster management sectors. His book is titled Compassion in Disaster Management: The Essential Ethic of Relational Leadership.

Hosts:

Katelyn Samson
Deputy Director, Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience (AIDR)

Mayeda Rashid
Manager, Capability Development and Engagement (AIDR)

Recording:

Coming soon

Webinar resources:

Recommended readings:

Giving an account of oneself by Judith Butler, published by Fordham University Press, 2005, (or look for the 2025 twentieth year anniversary edition)
The ethics of vulnerability: A feminist analysis of social life and practice by Erinn Gilson, Routledge 2014

Webinar 4 - 18 September 2025 - What we miss when we say 'disproportionate' - a 4-pillar lens on Indigenous disaster resilience

AIDR welcomed Dr Bhiamie Williamson, Associate Professor and Program Lead, National Indigenous Disaster Resilience, Monash University.

We often hear about the disproportionate impacts disasters have on Indigenous groups, but rarely explore the unique impacts. Bhiamie explored these unique impacts of major disasters on Indigenous groups through 4 pillars:

Political
Economic
Social
Spiritual

Bhiamie explained each of these, what they mean in the context of disaster resilience, and how they might be used to better understand what support and targeted investment in Indigenous disaster resilience may look like.

Dr Bhiamie Williamson

Dr Bhiamie Williamson is a Euahlayi man from north-west NSW with familial ties to north-west Queensland. He has led research into the impacts of disasters on Indigenous communities including examining the effects of the 2019–20 bushfires and 2022 Northern Rivers floods.

He is a graduate of the Australian National University and the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Bhiamie leads the National Indigenous Disaster Resilience project within the Fire to Flourish program at Monash University.

Webinar resources

Webinar 3 - 23 July 2025 - The policy context from global frameworks to national documents

AIDR welcomes Andrew Minack, First Assistant Coordinator General - Policy and Governance, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

NEMA coordinates Australia's commitments under the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework, and Second National Action Plan.

Andrew will discuss how these frameworks and the action plan guide the Australian Government's approach to disaster risk reduction and building resilience, and the work that the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) is doing to implement them.

Andrew will also highlight some of the opportunities and challenges in making resilience and disaster risk reduction matter at a national level as NEMA seeks to effectively apply global priorities in national, state and regional contexts across Australia.

Guest Speaker:

Andrew Minack

First Assistant Coordinator General - Policy and Governance, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA)

Andrew has had an extensive public sector career, working at an executive level in a range of Federal, state and local government agencies. He currently serves as the First Assistant Coordinator-General responsible for disaster resilience and recovery policy within the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). Prior to his role at NEMA, he led the establishment and operation of the Corporate Division for the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing. He was also involved in the operational response to the COVID-19 pandemic and served as Deputy Secretary at Emergency Management Victoria during the 2019/2020 bushfires.

Andrew has been involved in several highly complex reform projects in the public sector, in multiple agencies. He has also held executive roles in Victoria Police, where he was responsible for corporate strategy, stakeholder engagement, and performance improvement.

Outside of his professional life, Andrew enjoys surfing, walking in the Scottish Highlands, and is a tragic Richmond Football Club supporter.

Host:

John Richardson
Executive Director, Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience

Webinar resources:

Webinar 2 - 11 June 2025 - Thinking systemically about disaster risk

This webinar helped participants to start to think systemically about the interconnected, and cascading nature of disaster risk.

AIDR welcomed Professor Lauren Rickards, Director of the La Trobe Climate Change Adaptation Lab. Lauren drew on a range of systems ideas in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation research to explore what systemic risk means and why it matters for our work.

For the most part, our existing lifestyles and daily activities are heavily dependent on largely unseen and interconnected systems for the delivery of essential services when we need them (e.g. energy, water, food, health and education services, transport, and communications). These systems reflect a chain of accumulated decisions and choices made over generations, in different circumstances and with different priorities.

Current approaches to disaster risk reduction are being challenged in a world of more frequent and compounding hazards. As the population and economy continue to grow, increasing exposure is creating complex interdependencies that are leading to more systemic vulnerabilities.

The United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction has identified that a linear approach to managing risk is no longer sufficient, given the systemic nature of disaster risk. We need to better understand the consequences of disasters, how these can cascade through systems, where the boundaries of systems lie, and where the fragility in the connections within and between systems lie.

Guest Speaker:

Professor Lauren Rickards
Director of the La Trobe Climate Change Adaptation Lab

Lauren is Director of the La Trobe Climate Change Adaptation Lab. With colleagues within and affiliated with the Lab, she is using innovative social research to examine: the impacts of climate change on the sectors of society that sustain us (including government, environment, agriculture, water, education, health and emergency management); the far-reaching implications of these impacts for our collective wellbeing; and the deep, multi-level adaptation required.

Primarily a geographer by training, Lauren was a Lead Author with the Australasia chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. She has a DPhil in Human Geography from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and a BSc (Hons) in Ecology from the University of Melbourne.

Dr Neville Ellis
Manager of the Climate Adaptation Program

Neville Ellis is the Manager of the Climate Adaptation Program for the Western Australian emergency management sector, based within the Department of Fire and Emergency Services. He was formally a Contributing Author and Chapter Scientist on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1.5°C Special Report and has published research in various prestigious international journals. Neville is particularly interested in systemic risk and social-ecological resilience and their implications for emergency management.

Host:

John Richardson
Executive Director, Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience

Webinar resources:

Webinar 1 - 16 April 2025 - Foundations of disaster risk reduction and Resilience

Follow up Q&A discussion

AIDR welcomes David Sanderson, Inaugural Judith Neilson Professor of Architecture UNSW, to launch the Resilience Matters webinar.

Starting with an overview of the history of risk, resilience and disaster risk reduction (DRR), David will unpack key concepts of DRR, and explore DRR in practice, with particular consideration given to vulnerable people and groups, climate change adaptation and sustainable development.

Guest Speaker:

David Sanderson
Inaugural Judith Neilson Professor of Architecture at UNSW

David has over 30 years’ experience working across the world in development and emergencies. He worked for 12 years in NGOs and consultancy in all regions before joining academia in 2006. David was Director of the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP) at Oxford Brookes University 2006-2014. Between 2013-2014 he was a full time Visiting Professor at Harvard University.

David became the Inaugural Judith Neilson Chair of Architecture at UNSW in 2016. David has sat on several NGO and funding boards including the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Humanitarian Innovations Fund. He is author of the 2019 ODI/ALNAP Urban Humanitarian Response Good Practice Review and was co-editor of the 2016 IFRC World Disasters Report focusing on resilience. David holds a doctorate in development and disasters. As well as Australia, David has held (full) professorships in the UK and Norway and as well as the USA visiting professorships in Spain and France.

Kirsten Jenkins
Manager Community Safety, Maroondah City Council

Kirsten had a significant role in Nillumbik Shire Council’s response to the February 2009 bushfires that affected the municipality, both in community recovery and public health areas. She has completed a postgraduate diploma in Community and International Development. She has been to Haiti and Nepal following the earthquakes, as a Community Health delegate with the Australian Red Cross.

Since 2016, Kirsten has been the Community Safety Manager and Municipal Recovery Manager at Maroondah City Council in 2016. She played a lead role in the Council Covid recovery process as well as regularly supporting other councils during disasters such as January 2019-2020 bushfires.

Host:

John Richardson
Executive Director, Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience

Webinar resources:

Webinar slides

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