Elinor S. Meredith is a Postdoctoral Researcher focusing on volcanic multi-hazard risk at the Water and Climate Risk Department of the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) and the Department of Earth Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. With a background in geography and geohazards, her research focuses on understanding and quantifying how volcanic hazards affect communities, infrastructure, and society.
Research
Elinor develops and applies datasets and analytical tools to understand risk in volcanic environments, with a particular focus on spatial exposure, vulnerability, and empirical impact data. Her work spans local to global scales and considers how multiple, compound, and cascading hazards interact to shape impacts.
She currently works on two Alliance VU-UT funded projects: one analysing historical volcanic multi-hazard events and another about preparing for the risks associated with cascading land-surface hazards.
In 2026, she was awarded an NWO Veni grant for her research on impact-based volcanic multi-hazard risk. This research moves risk assessment from “where might hazards go?” toward understanding the future exposure and multi-hazard conditions under which impacts become disruptive.
Elinor completed her PhD at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, where she assessed lava flow impacts on the built environment using field-based and remote sensing methods, and developed lava-flow damage forecasting models.
Her subsequent postdoctoral work has examined exposure to large-scale low-probability events and spatio-temporal trends in urban exposure to volcanic eruptions. She is also interested in ethical disaster research practices.
Teaching
Elinor is supervising several BSc and MSc students, and welcomes opportunities to co-supervise projects related to volcanic hazards, risk, impacts, exposure, vulnerability, and geospatial analysis.
She holds a University Teaching Qualification (UTQ) and contributes to the UNDRR Multi-hazard Risk Assessment course, as well as teaching within VU programmes.
Other roles
Elinor holds a part-time position at 510 Global, the data and digital team of the Netherlands Red Cross. In this role, she works with UNDRR to develop training materials and stakeholder workshops that support communities in quantifying exposure and vulnerability to floods and droughts across African regions, with applications to anticipatory action.
She serves on the leadership teams of the IAVCEI Cities and Volcanoes Commission (CAV) and the IAVCEI Volcanic Hazard and Risk Commission (CVHR). Elinor is co-leading the Amsterdam Sustainability Institute (ASI) cluster on Natural Hazards & Society.
She is a guest journal editor on Volcanic Multi-hazards for the Journal of Applied Volcanology.
Expertise
Volcanology, volcanic risk, disaster risk assessment, impact assessment, data and geospatial analysis.
Education
2023: PhD in Volcanic Risk: Analysis of lava flow impacts for use in risk assessments. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
2017: MSc in Geophysical Hazards. University College London, UK.
2016: BSc in Geography with Study Abroad. University of Bristol, UK, and McMaster University, Canada.
