Fellowship caps PhD graduation celebrations

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

It will be a double celebration for emergency management specialist Sara McBride who is conferred with her doctorate at Massey University Graduation ceremonies in Wellington on Thursday.

Following graduation she will head to the United States on a Mendenhall Research Fellowship.

Awarded by the United States Geological Survey, the fellowship encourages recipients to further develop their own research and support existing world-class research.

Ms McBride will graduate with a PhD in Media Studies. Her thesis, titled “The Canterbury Tales; Learnings from the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence to inform better public communication models,” explores how communicators and emergency managers can develop better ways of engaging with their communities to encourage preparedness and resilience. Key findings include tapping into communities’ own knowledge and involving them in communication planning from the outset, so as to make scientific knowledge relevant to people’s situations and needs.

Ms McBride, who is originally from Washington State, says winning the fellowship was unexpected, as she has not observed the typical line of study for the prize referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Geosciences Fellowships.”

“I was surprised when I received word that I had the Fellowship; I didn’t follow a traditional academic career pathway having had time as a practitioner and, as a social scientist, we don’t often receive fellowships from geoscience focused agencies. It is a real honour.”

The vision of the United States Geological Survey is to be a world leader in the natural sciences through scientific excellence and responding to society’s needs.

Ms McBride’s fellowship will examine communication research regarding earthquake forecasts and earthquake early warning programmes in the United States. Fellows are appointed for two years and receive full salary and benefits.

She has mixed emotions about leaving Wellington, where she worked at GeoNet and GNS Science while being supervised on her thesis by staff at Massey University led by Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley from the School of English and Media Studies and Professor David Johnston from the Joint Centre for Disaster Research.

“Without the support of GNS, I would not have had the opportunity to do a PhD. In many ways this isn’t my Mendenhall but rather GNS Science’s and Massey’s through the Joint Centre for Disaster Research. The team at Massey has supported me every step of the way and I’m very grateful.”

Ms McBride started her career in emergency management working between 2006 and 2010 as the public education and public information coordinator for the Canterbury Civil Defence and Emergency Management Group.

She returned to Christchurch in the immediate aftermath of the fatal February 2011 earthquake to work with the earthquake response teams. She was knee deep in the emergency operation centre in the Christchurch Art Gallery, working as the Public Information Manager, second in command.

“It was a very stressful time for everyone. I knew deep down, that people would recover because Cantabrians are notoriously strong people but the wounds were deep. I had a lot of questions about what happened and how I could have done my job better; those questions led me to Massey University.”

Since submitting her thesis she has been working back at GeoNet as their information management team leader and was the public information duty officer for the Kaikoura earthquake too.

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