HOLLY JACOBSON

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Biography

As a Master of City Planning student at MIT, Holly studies how ecological systems can be used as templates for designing more sustainable urban environments, and how strengthening social-ecological systems can improve our capacity to adapt to climate change. Prior to MIT, she worked with MASS Design Group, a nonprofit, impact-driven architecture firm based in Boston, MA and Kigali, Rwanda. Holly received her BA in biology and environmental studies with a minor in visual arts from Bowdoin College.

RESEARCH

Climate change continues to bring new and uncertain threats. How do people internalize risk? Who chooses when it is necessary to act? The conceptualizations of risk, vulnerability, and resiliency are inherently values-based, generated by negotiated trade-offs, and varied based on societal, cultural, and physically contextual conditions. This research seeks to investigate individual and institutional perceptions of risk and vulnerability in Iceland in response to food security. Iceland’s climate, short growing season, periodic volcanic eruptions, high reliance on imports, and 2008 financial crisis have highlighted the vulnerability in food provision—and yet no national contingency plan currently exists. By tracking policy action related to agriculture and food system management, including the choice not to join the EU and new investments in geothermal greenhouses, this research will look at the relationship between perceived risk and its influence on the economic, social, and/or political barriers that currently foster the system’s vulnerability.