Building on a longstanding tradition of disaster studies at WUR since 1997, this cluster brings together scholars (within and outside CSPS) from a range of disciplines interested in conceptual and applied issues concerning hazards, disasters, crises, events, ‘dangerous natures’, and socio-technical or industrial catastrophes.

Vision and scope

Disasters are a major feature of contemporary life, capturing global headlines and with serious impacts on the built environment, livelihoods, institutions, and ecosystems. The ways in which disasters are conceptualised and constructed have provoked intense academic interest in recent decades.

Central teaching, research and supervision interests of current cluster members include the temporal and spatial nature of ‘events’ and ‘risks’; disaster politicisation; crisis construction; disaster cultures & risk education; vulnerability, citizenship & (state) governance; gender & disaster; hazardous urbanisation, floods, landslides, heat islands & fires; disaster capitalism; water conflict; drought & migration; industrial risk; dam breaks & extractivism. We work on worldwide projects and cases with a wide range of regional specialisms.

Activities

We organise lectures or seminars by participant researchers or inspiring visiting speakers. We also meet to discuss recent important books and papers. Our exciting co-organised two-day workshop in 2018, Exploring Urbanization: Resources, Events, and Movements brought in key speakers from across the globe. We are open to new members and to their suggestions for new initiatives and activities.

Outcomes

Collaborations within this cluster resulted in a successful session on Urban Disaster Governance at the Northern European Conference on Disaster Studies (NEEDS, Amsterdam 2018), a double session on Catastrophic Events at the RGS-IBG conference (London, 2019) and a forthcoming journal special issue in IJDRR around the same theme.

Contact

Interested in joining? Please contact us!

Jeroen Warner (SDC) jeroenwarner@gmail.com

Robert Coates (SDC) robert.coates@wur.nl

---

Related posts