Ebru Gencer

Ebru Gencer is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, a member of the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Columbia Global Centers in Istanbul, and the Founding Director of the Center for Urban Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience (CUDRR+R), a non-profit research center based in New York City.

Ebru Gencer’s teaching, research, and practice address issues related with disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and sustainable urban development, particularly in the international urban contexts. Her doctoral dissertation (Columbia University, 2007) examined “The Interplays between Natural Disasters, Vulnerability and Sustainable Development” and received the World Bank Young Scientist Applied Research Grant. From 2015 to 2020, Ebru Gencer was the Chair of the Urban Planning Advisory Group to the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction. Recently, she was also a Senior Urban Resilience Adviser at the World Bank and a Steering Committee member of UN’s Making Cities Resilient Campaign and the Global Alliance for Urban Crises.

Ebru Gencer has worked on projects in South-Eastern Europe, Turkey, Latin America, and the Caribbean regions, including positions at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and the Euro-Mediterranean Climate Change Center in Venice, Italy, as well as consultancies for the United Nations system. At CUDRR+R, she undertook a climate resilient and inclusive development project in Colombia, El Salvador, and Argentina. She also taught at the Master of Science in Emergency Architecture Program at the International University of Catalonia in Barcelona.

Ebru Gencer has presented extensively at conferences and was the Associate Editor of Elsevier’s Progress in Disaster Science Journal. She is the author of several books and articles on the nexus of disaster risk reduction, climate resilience, and sustainable urban development, among others: International Experiences in Urban Resilience and City Responses to Extreme Events (World Bank – in process), Learning Modules on Resilient Cities and Territories (UCLG, UN-Habitat and UNDRR 2020), The Handbook for Local Government Leaders: How to Make Cities More Resilient (UNISDR 2017), The Interplay Between Urban Development, Vulnerability and Risk Management (Springer 2013), (as a coordinating lead author) the Urban Climate Change Research Network’s Second Assessment Report on Climate Change and Cities (Cambridge University Press 2018), and (as a contributing author) Words into Action Guide: Using Traditional and Indigenous Knowledges for Disaster Risk Reduction (ICCROM and UNDRR 2022).