Beki McElvain

Disaster Governance; Development Finance; Publics; Populism; Risk; Political Economy; Critical Urban Geography; Social Study of Science

Instructor of Record

2014-19 DLab, UC Berkeley: QGIS Fundamentals & ArcGIS Online Workshops

2011-17 City College of San Francisco: Introduction to GIS

2016 Embarc Summer Design Academy, UC Berkeley: Sustainable Planning & Design/Build

Graduate Student Instructor

2019 ED4C Future Ecologies (Instructor: Kristina Hill)

2018 GEOG c188 Geographic Information Systems (Instructor: John Radke)

2019 CP202 Introduction to Planning Practice (Co-designed with Instructor: Karen Frick)

2018 CP119 Planning for Sustainability (Instructor: Charisma Acey)

2014 CP204c Introduction to GIS and City Planning (Instructor: John Radke)

2014 GEOG c188 Geographic Information Systems (Instructor: John Radke)

Guest Lectures and Seminars

2023 Guest Lecture, Critical Perspectives on the Global Financial System: Disaster Governance and Autorecovery, Division of Geography and Environment, Loughborough University, UK (Instructor: Savannah Cox)

2020 Guest Lecture, Research Methods in Environmental Design: Critical Mapping and Data Collection in the Field, Collage of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley (Instructor: Zachary Lamb)

2023 Michael B. Teitz Fellowship

2023 Network for a New Political Economy/Berkeley Economy & Society Initiative Research Grant

2022 Network for a New Political Economy Fieldwork Fellowship

2021-22 U.S. Dept. of Education: Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship (Mexico)

2021 Summer U.S. Dept. of Education: Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship

2021 Global Metropolitan Studies (GMS) Summer Pre-Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (Mexico)

2020-21 Blum Center for Developing Economies’ InFEWS (NSF) Academic Year Fellowship

2019 InFEWS (NSF) Winter Grant to Mexico City

2019 Global Metropolitan Studies (GMS) Summer Pre-Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (Mexico)

2018 InFEWS (NSF) Winter Grant to Mexico City

2018 Doctoral Study Fellowship (4 year), Department of City & Regional Planning, UC Berkeley

2018 Outstanding Service in Public Policy Award, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute

2014 Mills College Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program Grant

2014 Outstanding Senior Thesis Award, Mills College

REFEREED

McElvain, B. (2023). “Fixing” finance? The dialectical publics of resilient disaster governance in Mexico city. Urban Geography, 0 (0), 1–22.

McElvain, B. (2023). Autorecovery and everyday disaster in Mexico City’s peripheries. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 41(2), 253–274.

Knuth, S., Cox, S., Savareh, S., Taylor, Z., Morris, J., and McElvain, B. (2023). "US Housing Under Climate Risk: A New Mortgage Crisis in the Making?" Journal of Urban Affairs.

Moreno Carranco, M., McElvain, B. 2020. "Life Above, Rubble Below: A Case of Historically Produced Risk & Perception in Mexico City." Ardeth Magazine 06: Contingency.

Nikolaou, S., Diaz-Fanas, G., Garini, E., & McElvain, B. 2019. "Dried Lakes Do Tell Tales: Seismic Soil Amplification in Mexico City." Geo-Strata—Geo Institute of ASCE, 23(2), 40-46.

REFEREED (PIPELINE)

McElvain, B. "What Kind of State is México? Urban Disaster Governance and the Populist Resilience Regime." In Preparation for Submission.

McElvain, B and Colven, E. "Imagining a Market: A Relational Study of Disaster Risk Finance in Indonesia and México." Funded by and in Preparation for Submission for Human Geography.

BOOK CHAPTERS

McElvain, B. 2023. Agua Bajo Tierra: Mapping Hydraulic Imaginaries in Iztapalapa, chapter in "Mexico City: Space | Power | Materiality." Edited volume by Greig Chrysler and María Moreno Carranco.

PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

Mattiuzzi, Elizabeth and McElvain, B. 2022. "Bouncing Forward from Disasters on Hawaii’s Big Island: Lessons for Equitable Recovery and Future Resilience." Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Community Development Research Brief 2022-05.

Tam, L., & Johnson, L. A. 2020. Safety First: Improving Hazard Resilience in the Bay Area. SPUR Regional Strategy (PDF). (Hazard Maps: McElvain, B.).

Montojo, N. and McElvain, B. 2015. Accessibility and investment in North Oakland: Case study on gentrification and displacement pressures in the MacArthur Area of Oakland, CA (PDF). In M. Zuk and K. Chapple (eds). Case Studies on Gentrification and Displacement in the San Francisco Bay Area (pp. 56-69). UC Berkeley Center for Community Innovation.