Cristina Coirolo is currently conducting doctoral research on Climate Change Adaptation and Structural Poverty: Current Impact and Transformative Potential of Social Protection in Bangladesh. She has an interdisciplinary background that includes cultural and social anthropology, and development studies. She has worked for non-profit organizations in the U.S., conducting research and implementing programmes to ensure compliance with national fair housing legislation, focussing on ethnic, gender, age and disabilities-based discrimination, and on arranging temporary housing and life development programs for the urban homeless.

In the U.K., she has conducted research for Fauna and Flora International (FFI) on impacts of climate change on biodiversity and secondary impacts on human communities in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas, as an input to developing an organization position on adaptation to global climate change. From February 2007-June 2008, she worked with the New Economics Foundation (NEF) as a member of a project team on global climate change, socio-economic obstacles to adaptation by the poor, and public policies to reduce vulnerability, improve resilience and facilitate adaptation. While at NEF she also conducted research on social policy in the UK, social exclusion impacts on children, and policy approaches to address exclusionary processes and unequal outcomes.