Ellen Beatrice Robson

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience at Durham University. My research centres around developing stakeholder-focused guidance and methodologies to help mitigate landslides and improve slope stabilisation in lower income countries. The methodologies and guidance are developed by working collaboratively with stakeholders (currently in Nepal and India), using a combination of methods including numerical analyses, geotechnical and geological mapping, and qualitative data collection.

I acquired my PhD in Geotechnical Engineering from Newcastle University in 2023, which was sponsored by NERC IAPETUS. My PhD aimed to further understand some of the causes for inadequate road slope stabilisation in lower income country settings, and to develop stakeholder-focused methodologies to aid the planning and design of road slope stabilisation.

During my PhD, I completed a three month internship at the Research and Information Service (RaISe) of the Northern Ireland Assembly. During the intern, I produced a blog post on transport trends during the COVID-19 pandemic in Northern Ireland and a published research article and blog post on climate change risks to transport infrastructure in Northern Ireland.

Prior to my PhD, I received an MSci in Geology from the University of Birmingham in 2017, with a year abroad at the University of Copenhagen. During my undergraduate, I conducted two months of research at the Open University using Pro3D (a 3D image viewer) to examine and measure ripple-like bedforms found along the Opportunity rover traverse of Mars.