UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Faculty and student researchers are encouraged to submit proposals for a research symposium on changing climates, which will be hosted by the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School, March 4-5, 2026.
Titled “Creative Methodologies for Studying Changing Climates,” the two-day hybrid symposium will examine the increasing impact on communities around the world due the impacts of climate change, including heatwaves, droughts, fires and flooding.
“Designers and residents alike spend mounting energy and resources to reshape their surrounding built environments and protect the lives and livelihoods of their communities against such extremes,” said Lisa D. Iulo, director of the Hamer Center for Community Design in the Stuckeman School and symposium co-organizer. “More work is needed, however, to bridge the gap between the methodological approaches used to understand how individuals and societies learn to coexist with climate change, and how new techniques and technologies can inform building practices better attuned to changing weather conditions on the ground.”
The symposium, she said, will “examine how diverse methodologies can reveal situated lessons of being and becoming with climate to offer new insights for producing spaces able to cope with exacerbated yet uncertain climate futures.”
Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, geography, sociology, anthropology, architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design. Proposals will be accepted through Oct. 15 and can be submitted via Google forms
Karen Paiva Henrique, assistant professor in the Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam, and Aparna Parikh, assistant teaching professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and Asian studies, are co-organizing the symposium.
Additional information can be requested by contacting the event organizers at climatemethods@gmail.com.