Lecture report: Conflict zones and building heritage – Prof. Lisa Mol – 9th Dec 2025

Lecture Report:

We were encouraged to see a good turnout (at a time of pantomimes and mock exams) for the final lecture in our Autumn series. This was presented by Lisa Mol from the University of the West of England and focussed on building heritage in conflict zones.

Professor Lisa Mol from UWE: “When your field site is a conflict zone and you want to protect a very old building”

Lisa teaches Geography on a range of modules in BA and BSc Geography and is Co-Director of the Centre for Environment, Society and Resilience within the College of Arts, Technology and Environment at UWE. She works with many organisations in the UK and oversea to support ‘heritage in the crossfire’ by developing new techniques, training stakeholders and local practitioners, and influencing policy in this challenging field. Funders include the Red Cross, Heritage for Peace, British Council, Leverhulme Trust, the Royal Academy of Engineering and more.

After a PhD at Oxford with a focus on rock weathering and influence on rock art in South Africa, Lisa continued to use a combination of geochemical, high-resolution geophysical and rock permeability and photogrammetry methods in a rather more applied field – focussing on characterising physical damage through incidental and active targeting during conflict today. Other work has looked at historical examples -indeed a recent paper looks at impacts of WWII bomb explosions on weathering damage of architectural heritage in nearby Bath, England (see paper online).

To conduct research, policy advice and training in this field requires a diverse team. There is plenty of sophisticated science but also geopolitics, humanitarian concerns, aspects of risk and resilience assessment. Legislation plays an important role.

This was challenging material to listen to at times. “Kill radius”, “mortar bomb pressure wave”, “ballistic impacts” are not your standard fare in geography talks. And, of course, this is about much more than buildings – people are front and centre – impacted in many ways by the violence and damage. Lisa gave some great examples of the project’s reach in terms of training and education in difficult settings such as Yemen and Sudan.

Some of the skills adopted in research have filtered into teaching at UWE. We were presented with an example of the use of digital twins for immersive training (much safer). UWE students were able to model disaster planning with 3-D renditions of urban settings.

UWE students using a digital twin in disaster management training.

Our thanks to Lisa for a stimulating talk. This is interdisciplinary material at the nexus of armed conflict, climate change and society and is rapidly developing.