Series number: 2023-14 As humans living in the 21st century, we face a seemingly unending succession of crises (e.g., natural disasters, pandemics, financial crises and political upheavals), many of which will likely become more frequent and severe in the years to come. Amidst these unprecedented contemporary challenges lies a remarkable potential: crises can allow us also to challenge the status quo, find new opportunities and change for the better, instead of merely preserving and/or recovering what we had (typically referred to as “bouncing back”). Remarkably, such positive angle has remained mostly overlooked by studies on how people can adapt to contemporary crises. This PhD dissertation introduces the novel construct transilience, defined as the perceived capacity to persist (persistence), adapt flexibly (adaptability), and positively transform (transformability) in the face of an adversity. The core aim is to investigate whether people perceive they can do more than ‘bounce back’ to the status quo when confronted with large-scale contemporary adversities, such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, two overarching research questions are addressed in this thesis. First, do people perceive transilience, both in the face of dierent contemporary threats with varying levels of severity, as well as at dierent levels (i.e., individual and collective)? Second, to what extent does higher transilience promote engagement in adaptation actions and mental health, across dierent examples of contemporary threats? All in all, the research presented in this PhD dissertation opens up broader, innovative and hopeful pathways for our understanding of how humans can adapt to the unavoidable crises of our time.
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