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
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 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 Journal Articles
McElvain, B. (2023). Autorecovery and everyday disaster in Mexico City’s peripheries. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758231161613
Moreno, 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.
Book Chapters
McElvain, B. 2022. 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. Link.
Tam, L., & Johnson, L. A. 2020. Safety First: Improving Hazard Resilience in the Bay Area. SPUR Regional Strategy. (Hazard Maps: McElvain, B.) Link.
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. In M. Zuk and K. Chapple (eds). Case Studies on Gentrification and Displacement in the San Francisco Bay Area (pp56-69). Berkeley: UC Berkeley Center for Community Innovation. Link.
Work in Progress
McElvain, B. “Failing to “Fix” Finance: (Counter)Publics and Urban Disaster Governance in Mexico City.” Revise and resubmit at Urban Geography.
McElvain, B. “What Kind of State is México?: Disaster Governance and the Populist Resilience Regime.” In Preparation for Submission to the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.
McElvain, B and Colven, E. “Imagining a Market: A Relational Study of Disaster Risk Finance in Indonesia and México.” In Preparation for Submission to the journal Human Geography.
McElvain, B., Knuth, S., Wagner, J., Forino, G., and Buyana, K. “Cities Can’t Save the Planet: Returning to the State in Urban Climate Finance.” In Preparation for Submission to an Organized Special Issue at the journal City.