From disaster to opportunity: bringing the El Niño phenomenon to the classroom

As a potentially severe El Niño Costero is currently gathering force in Peru – according to the government’s emergency alert (27/02/26) expected to reach peak proportions by around June, you are invited to participate in a briefing workshop about the ‘El Niño: a phenomenon of opportunities’ teaching resource.

This tool has been developed in partnership with the Royal Geographical Society by Peruvian and British secondary school teachers and researchers from the University of St Andrews as part of physical and human geography research in the Sechura Desert of northern Peru.

Based on materials generated by Peruvian students, it explains how their community has historically managed the flooding hazards associated with a major El Niño event. Their videos, stories and images show how intense rains can bring both challenges and opportunities for local communities. 

Led by the resource editors Dr Grace Healy and Professor Nina Laurie, this online session provides a chance for teachers to learn more about the resource and the research behind it.

It invites participants to explore beyond the dominant global disaster narratives in order to learn from desert communities in northern Peru about how they deal with crises in productive ways that reflect a hopeful geography of resilience and climate-event adaptation.

The resource uses a range of data collection methods and sources to reflect the diverse nature of geography as a discipline. It has been developed for use with 16–18-year-old students.

However, teachers may find opportunities to adapt the resource for younger students, particularly in light of anticipated changes to the national geography curriculum in England, including a shift towards ‘embedding disciplinary knowledge’, ‘clarifying and reinforcing requirements for fieldwork’, and embedding ‘climate change and sustainability more explicitly across different key stages’ (DfE, 2025, pp. 83–84).

About the speakers

Professor Nina Laurie is a human geographer with interests in global challenges that sit at the interface between development and the environment. Her life-long passion is Peru where she has worked with Peruvian research partners for more than 30 years. She has authored five books including Indigenous Development in the Andes.

In 2020 she was awarded the Royal Geographical Society Busk Medal for her contribution to social inclusion, international development. She currently holds a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship ‘Development futures in a COVID, climate challenges world: a decolonial approach’ which reflects on more three decades of field-based research in Peru and the wider Lain American region. 

Dr Grace Healy is Director of Education at the Chartered College of Teaching. Prior to this role, Grace was a geography teacher and also held leadership positions in schools and across multi-academy trusts.

Grace holds a doctorate in curriculum studies and geography education from UCL Institute of Education, where her research focused on teachers’ intellectual work and the recontextualisation of knowledge through geography teachers’ professional practice. She is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and an Honorary Associate Professor at UCL.

She currently serves as a Trustee of Oasis Community Learning, Chair of BERA’s British Curriculum Forum Steering Group, Associate Editor of The Curriculum Journal and Associate Fellow of the UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education.

Booking information

• Advance booking for this event is required. In order to book you will need an account on our website. If you already have an account you will be prompted to log in when you click 'book now'. Please create an account if you do not have one yet (you do not need to be a member of the Society to create an account).
• This event will be held on Microsoft Teams and joining instructions will be included in your confirmation email.
• Delegates will be sent details of how to access the event approximately a week before the event. If this email does not reach you, please contact us at events@rgs.org before the day of the event.

If you have any questions or require assistance with your booking, please email events@rgs.org