IHRR Newsletter Summer 2013

Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience Newsletter

Interview:

Adaptation: Re-Framing Climate Change Migration

Dr Andrew Baldwin, Durham University

Plus:

• Surviving Earthquakes in China • Coastal archaeological heritage at risk • Christopher Moyes Fellow Spotlight

Fighting Hunger in Bangladesh Cover Photo: Mohammad Ansari

Volume 6, Number 3

www.dur.ac.uk/ihrr

Summer 2013

Contents From the Executive Director ...................................................................................... 3 Christopher Moyes Memorial Fellow ........................................................................... 4 Monga: Hunger and Employment in northwest Bangladesh ............................................ 5 Managing coastal archaeological heritage at risk: The ALERT Mobile App. ........................ 9 Adaptation: Re-Framing Climate Change Migration Interview with Dr Andrew Baldwin ............................................................................. 11 Update on the MOVE project .................................................................................... 14 Surviving Earthquakes in China: Research and Practice ............................................... 15 New Guides on Disaster Intervention, Humanitarian Aid and Ethics .............................. 19 Publications ........................................................................................................... 19 IHRR Presents ........................................................................................................ 23 Awards and Grants .................................................................................................. 23

Want to submit news about your research in hazard, risk or resilience at Durham University?

Contact: brett.cherry@durham.ac.uk

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IHRR Newsletter

From the Executive Director of Geography, discussing a programme funded by the European Union on Climate change and migration: knowledge, law and policy, and theory. He explains the importance of social attitudes and cultural practices for the ways that societies respond to migration linked to the long-term environmental transitions associated with climate change.

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his newsletter from the Institute of Hazard Risk and Resilience provides an update on a wide range of exciting work by researchers from Durham University. Several of the contributions in this edition of our newsletter demonstrate that hazards and risks are not limited to sudden, short-lived conditions, but are often linked to long-term challenges of reconstruction after major crises, or with ongoing, ever-present risks in our environment. Furthermore, they illustrate the importance of research promoted through IHRR, spanning different disciplines to study human behaviour and social processes alongside physical environmental conditions.

Professor Lena Dominelli in the School of Applied Social Sciences describes her work in collaboration with colleagues at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and partners in UNISDR on reconstruction after destructive earthquake events in China.

This illustrates a strong stream of work at IHRR on knowledge exchange to enhance reconstruction and resilience after sudden and disruptive events. Crisis response at the time of such an event is crucially important, but so is the long, hard task of rebuilding physical infrastructure and human networks and organizations afterwards. Professor Dominelli also contributes to a major NERC funded project entitled Earthquakes without Frontiers which seeks to share and enhance good practice in this field.

We all share a social responsibility for care of our environment and this is one reason why collaborations between university researchers and non-academic partners are so important.

Dr E. L贸pez-Romero in the Department of Archaeology has recently begun another EU funded project on Managing Coastal Archaeological Heritage at Risk. This builds on research begun in France at the University of Rennes so is another example of the expansive research networks linking IHRR and Durham University to research centres across Europe and beyond. It illustrates how members of the public can help to build essential databases from their own observations.

In addition to fostering major research projects, IHRR prioritises support to those starting their academic careers, including PhD Students. We report here on another study of long-term challenges to human welfare by Mohammed Ansari, conducting PhD research on the hazards of insecure and exploitative employment practices in the agricultural sector in Bangladesh. Also, Joseph Sambali describes his PhD project on the significance of cultural practices for disease risk in Tanzania. Joseph is one of several students sponsored by generous donations from the Christopher Moyes Memorial Foundation.

Professor Sarah Curtis Executive Director of IHRR

We also feature in this issue a conversation between Brett Cherry, IHRR Research Writer and Dr Andrew Baldwin, from the Department Summer 2013

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Christopher Moyes Memorial Fellow – Joseph Sambali Joseph Sambali’s PhD research explores how communities in Ngara, Tanzania perceive risk of environment-related diseases such as malaria and diarrhoeal disease.

Prior to his PhD, Joseph was trained in veterinary medicine and was a practicing veterinarian in Tanzania for five years. He was also a researcher at the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania that studies environment-related diseases, especially malaria. At Ifakara, Joseph became interested in the social science of how people perceive health practices and disease, which is important for developing effective health policy to improve the health of communities vulnerable to disease.

Joseph is researching how a person’s social and cultural values influence their behaviour in response to three of the most common diseases in Tanzania: malaria, acute respiratory infection and diarrhoeal disease. Experts, such as scientists, and health professionals, often view risk

A village in Tanzania. differently from the public. While experts may rely upon data collected from scientific research to inform their understanding of risk, the public will often draw on other forms of information to evaluate risk that is beyond scientific or medical advice.

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The highest priorities for village communities in Ngara are sustaining important relationships, such as family ties. In order to create effective health policy, health promotion and advice

Showing young people how to wash their hands properly. needs to respond to communities’ social relationships and living conditions. For his PhD, Joseph is investigating the importance of social relationships and values for how communities in Ngara, Tanzania perceive health practices such as hand washing or interventions to combat malaria. This could help develop new ways of integrating health practices into communities.

Rural communities in Tanzania usually prioritise their social practices and identity over concerns for health risks. For example, they may not view basic health practices such as hand washing as necessary, believing that it is only for ‘westerners’ or people living in urban areas. But when the risk of disease jeopardises their social and cultural values it may allow for opportunities to integrate public health practices into communities. For his PhD, Joseph is searching for a common understanding between villagers’ values and expert medical advice in order to find a better way to implement health interventions.

Joseph’s research is supported by the Christopher Moyes Memorial Foundation. http://www.moyesfoundation. org/

IHRR Newsletter

Monga: Hunger and Unemployment in northwest Bangladesh Hunger is a big challenge for people living in Bangladesh. Although measures have been taken to reduce hunger, there is still much work to be done in areas that experience it regularly, particularly the northwest. In northwest

to go without food so their children can eat. It affects the poor most of all. Because there is no work available in the north, many labourers venture south to the capital city of Dhaka in hopes of finding a job to support their families.

The monga is a local problem of food insecurity that is difficult to trace using national statistics alone.

The World Bank, for example, collects data on chronic food security in Bangladesh, but only at a national scale. Research into the spread of monga in the northern region of Bangladesh, can account for what may have been missed by studies that do not investigate how individual families struggle to survive during the monga season.

A typical meal during the monga.

Bangladesh, such as the Rangpur District, the Bengali term monga refers to an immense problem of seasonal hunger and unemployment. Derived from the words abhab, which means need and akal, famine, the monga is an adverse cycle of unemployment, hunger and poverty that takes place after the rice planting season from September to November.

It is linked to the production of rice, which is the staple food of Bangladesh that millions of people depend on for survival.

Unlike the problem of episodic famine, which is normally resolved through aid programmes, the monga is a chronic form of food insecurity. It is also an ‘invisible’ economic, ecological and social crisis that many politicians in Bangladesh deny exists.

Monga leaves families especially vulnerable, with parents unable to feed their children, forcing them

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Mohammad Ansari, who is doing his PhD research on the monga, is examining the problem from a household perspective as certain families according to their livelihoods are more likely to suffer from monga. “The food insecurity situation is not only a matter of a clinical side of hunger, it’s also a matter of the subjective accounts of hunger”, said Ansari. He is using qualitative methods such as participant observation,

Workers in rice field.

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informal meetings with communities, semistructured and in-depth interviews. Ansari has also met with Government Organisation (GO) and Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) officials to talk to them about the policies and programmes they are implementing to combat the monga, including implementing employment

Rice paddy stock at the community dhan (paddy) bank. schemes, starting rice banks and introducing high yielding rice varieties.

While the monga is a seasonal food crisis, it is closely connected with unemployment. In Bengali, the word dadon refers to farm labourers selling their crops in advance of the harvest season.

Farmers are left vulnerable if they invest all of their money into producing crops that are sold prior to harvest time. They sell their crops to the landlords in exchange for a rather low advance payment. If there is a surplus the farmer cannot sell his extra harvest in the market, but must give it to the landlord.

Labourers are also vulnerable to dadon by selling their wage labour in advance at a low price so they can get paid sooner. There are alternatives, such as working in

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the tobacco fields, but tobacco companies have limited, unfixed wages that offer little and are exploitative.

Other finances are available from government who provide IGA (Income Generating Allowance) that is intended to be used to help people start their own business, for example, but since it is a relatively small amount of money it is used for everyday purposes, like buying food, rather than for generating income. Other options are available to labourers, but provide little sustainable relief and often put them in a worse situation than before.

Government does provide public service jobs, but not necessarily during the monga. In fact, they are often provided during the harvest season when workers are able to earn money and feed their families. Wages for public service jobs such as road construction or digging ponds are hardly competitive in comparison to harvesting rice, and because government is not uniform in acknowledging the problem of monga these jobs are not provided when they are needed most. This leaves only a few dubious options available, including high interest loans and

Cultivation of SDR rice varieties.

IHRR Newsletter

migration to the capital city of Dhaka in search of employment.

According to Ansari, workers will often take loans then migrate to Dhaka to find work. Young people especially travel to Dhaka or other cities in the south, this includes people living on small islands in the rivers (chars) who are most vulnerable to the monga and food insecurity.

The chars are extremely isolated and become inundated during the monsoon season. Migrants in Dhaka from the chars and other parts of northern Bangladesh, if they manage to gain employment, are living in slums where they are at risk of disease and other health problems.

Ansari says many new migrants who arrive in Dhaka often return home with nothing. “They need social connections for getting a job in the city area”, he said.

While women do not normally migrate because of the monga, the garment industries have attracted young women to Dhaka. Although migration may be able to offer some opportunities for people escaping from the monga, Ansari argues this is not a very good strategy for alleviating their troubles. Instead, there may be other ways to prevent hunger or to at least help northern communities sustain themselves until harvest time.

While the opposition party in Bangladesh claims that the monga does not exist, and the majority party seem to be dodging the issue politically, some NGOs are developing programmes to address the monga directly. One solution is establishing rice banks.

In order to mitigate shortages in rice during the monga season rice banks allow people to deposit small amounts of rice over time, including rice from humanitarian aid. When there are surpluses Summer 2013

more rice can be deposited, but people must also return the amounts of rice they have taken, which is not always possible. “When you’re poor you don’t have the capacity to deposit the amount of rice required”, said Ansari. Rice banks are a way of alleviating hunger, but not a solution to the complex nature of the root problem.

GO initiative of improved wheat seed production at farmer level.

Other contributions to resolving monga could come from new rice varieties developed by GOs and NGOs that can be grown in a short period of time. SDR or Short Duration Rice varieties could allow farmers, labourers and their families

Teesta River dried up.

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to mitigate hunger themselves. If the time between planting and harvesting is significantly reduced, then the monga potentially could be kept in check because labourers would not have to wait as long to get back to work harvesting rice. High yield rice varieties that are backed by NGOs could also benefit labourers and farmers.

However, if these new varieties of seed are used “farmers need to be trained to know how to use them”, said Ansari, and they also need to be suitable for their needs.

Postgraduate Student Behind the Research: Mohammad Ansari is a PhD student from the Department of Geography who graduated from Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh. His supervisor is Professor Peter Atkins. m.n.a.ansari@durham.ac.uk

Other new agricultural initiatives are also being introduced, such as growing pumpkins on sand bars. ‘Sand bar cropping’ can help farmers earn a living and provide adequate food for their families, although further work is needed for these crops to be marketed. Establishing better means of adaptation that concentrate on communities vulnerable to monga could help eradicate this dangerous cycle of hunger and unemployment, and prevent one from following the other.

“People are trying a wide variety of activities to adapt,” said Ansari.

Sweet pumpkin cultivation on the dried Teesta River bed.

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IHRR Newsletter

Managing coastal archaeological heritage at risk: The ALERT Mobile App Dr Elias Lopez-Romero Department of Archaeology Present climatic change and anthropogenic pressure increasingly affect the coastal zone.

Hundreds of archaeological sites are currently threatened along the European Atlantic coasts by the accelerated relative rise in sea level, erosion, and various anthropogenic modifications to the environment. In spite of this situation little attention has been paid to the development of methodologies for monitoring the vulnerability of this kind of heritage. This is particularly true in areas like Western France or the Iberian Peninsula where, unlike research initiatives in England, Ireland, Scotland or the Mediterranean Basin, there have not been long-term dedicated approaches to this topic.

Since 2006, the ALERT project has brought together researchers involved in coastal archaeology. This group quickly moved toward developing an interdisciplinary approach aiming at the construction of a vulnerability model for coastal heritage, developing assessment and monitoring maps, and assessing the strategies for research and action adapted to the local and regional scales.

As a result of this, a dedicated tool for the vulnerability assessment of coastal archaeological heritage was developed: the Vulnerability Evaluation Form (VEF). This is a field grid including ten variables (natural and anthropogenic factors) which are evaluated in terms of distance from the archaeological site (e.g. distance to the cliff) or intensity (e.g. biological erosion). The evaluation form is deliberately simplified so it can be filled out by all volunteers and researchers participating in the project without having had any specific training.

In order to improve the field procedure of data collection the ALERT project have recently developed ALERT Mobile. This is a web application accessible from a range of different devices (laptops, smartphones etc.) and connected to a central online database. The App allows the user to type and transmit all the relevant information of the Vulnerability Evaluation Form (VEF) for each site to a secure server.

This also includes the automatic transmission of GPS positions (if available through the device), photographs of the sites and/or relevant information about its vulnerability.

This application, which is ergonomic for mobile use, has been developed thanks to the jQueryMobile framework. This one is compatible with many smartphones and language based on

Summer 2013

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Latest from IHRR Blog Littering as a source of urban diffuse pollution http://wp.me/pSWpn-1jp Living the Global Social Experiment of Geoengineering: A Challenge for Global Governance http://wp.me/pSWpn-1jS Growing Up in an Orphanage: Tales of Personal Resilience http://wp.me/pSWpn-1k6 WMO Global Climate Report: A decade of climate extremes http://wp.me/pSWpn-1kh Monsoon mayhem in Central China http://wp.me/pSWpn-1kt

HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. The production of dynamic secure web pages, via a dedicated web server in CReAAH (1) laboratory, has been programmed in PHP. The display of the interactive maps based on Open Street Map was made using the plugin osmLeaflet.jQuery. There is also a classic web version for administering users and adding administrative information requiring desk-based research.

The application will be further tested through several case studies in Western France by Dr Pau Olmos (University of Rennes, OSUR (2)), in the framework of the ARVOR post-doctoral fellowship funded by the Brittany region.

Further steps in the development of the ALERT research perspective include testing the suitability of close-range photogrammetry and LiDAR as monitoring tools for coastal archaeological site erosion. This will be one of the tasks of the eSCOPES project by Dr E. López-Romero, Marie Curie-IEF Fellow in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University. For more information about these projects contact Elias at elias.lopez-romero@durham.ac.uk.

(1) CReAAH Centre de Recherche en Archéologie, Archéosciences, Histoire (Rennes, France) (2) OSUR : Observatoire des Sciences de l’Univers (Rennes 1 University, France). Are you urban pollution aware? http://wp.me/pSWpn-1iQ

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Food Crisis? The Real Problem is Poverty http://wp.me/pSWpn-1kE Growing Up in an Orphanage: Tales of Personal Resilience Part 2 http://wp.me/pSWpn-1kV Growing Up in an Orphanage: Tales of Personal Resilience Part 3 http://wp.me/pSWpn-1lm Handbook on Disaster Humanitarian Aid http://wp.me/pSWpn-1lz

Intervention

and

Full Protection Malaria Vaccine to be Trialled in Tanzania http://wp.me/pSWpn-1lR UK Needs Better Preparation for Heat Waves http://wp.me/pSWpn-1lX See the film Chasing Ice and Host a Screening http://wp.me/pSWpn-1lu Spectacular landslides from the Gansu earthquake in China http://wp.me/pSWpn-1la Bovine TB Risk in Britain: Past and Present http://wp.me/pSWpn-1e3

IHRR Newsletter

Adaptation: Re-Framing Climate Change Migration Interview with Dr Andrew Baldwin Dr Andrew Baldwin is Chair of a major multidisciplinary project at Durham University on climate change migration called COST Action 11011 Climate change and migration: knowledge, law and policy and theory.

COST Action 11011 is studying the many facets of climate change migration from a legal, political and theoretical perspective. Andrew’s research focuses on race and to a large extent environmental politics as well as the nature of risk itself. He is an editor of a recent special issue of Geoforum entitled: ‘Risky natures, natures of risk’ (http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.12.016). In a conversation with IHRR Newsletter Editor Brett Cherry, Andrew shares his thoughts on the racial context of climate change migration and how a critical understanding of the framing of the climate change migrant is needed to advance this emerging field of research, and to develop an adequate policy response to the displacement of communities due to climate change.

What is a climate change migrant?

The obvious answer is that there is no way of identifying a climate change migrant or at least that’s what the existing literature tells us. The most common explanation is that migration is a complex phenomenon. People migrate for all sorts of different reasons and several reasons at once, so to isolate climate as a determining variable is impossible. You can’t disaggregate climate change from all the other variables that explain why an individual migrates. Similarly you could say, well, this particular climatic event displaced x number of people’, but then to attribute the event itself to climate change is obviously problematic; that further affects our ability to identify whether someone is a climate migrant.

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What is racialisation and what do researchers in critical race theory mean by it?

Racialisation is a key term in helping us understand how bodies become differentiated.

It names the process by which bodies come to take on racial connotations. It is the process by which skin comes to signify something more than simply the colour. It’s the process by which, for example, brown skin comes to mean danger for some people, or the process by which people may view the veiled Muslim woman as symbolic of Muslim oppression towards women, or it’s the process that enables white bodies to pass through social space (or rather spaces that are normalised as white) entirely unencumbered by the colour of their skin.

What do you think is the relationship between race, migration and climate change? What brings them together?

I think that’s a really important question. I don’t have a clear answer, but the work that I do is really about trying how we might come to understand the migrant as racialised. I’m interested in that because migration itself is an incredibly racialised phenomenon, in the sense that there are many public anxieties about increasing levels of migration. We have to understand those anxieties in racial terms. I think at best what we can do is identify various ways in which the figure of the climate migrant in discourse is racialised -- the way it takes on racial connotations. That’s really important because it opens up the possibility for thinking about racism in the context of debates about climate migration.

What is the COST Action 11011 Climate change and migration: knowledge, law and policy and theory project and what are its core aims?

Broadly, it’s a networking project aimed at building the social science research agenda on the question of climate change and migration.

The Action is broken into three working groups:

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Group 1 concerns empirical questions, for example, ‘how can we know the migrant?’ What are the various knowledge practices that are used to know the climate migrant or to know this phenomenon? The emphasis is very much on policy relevance of research that will better illuminate the phenomenon such as GIS, agentbased modelling and ethnography. The second working group is law and policy. There the issue is around understanding the phenomenon of climate change migration as a normative problem, a problem that requires some type of policy or legal solution. The third dimension is really intended to open up the phenomenon of climate change migration to a wider set of theoretical and methodological perspectives.

For example, can we use post-colonial theory to understand the phenomenon? Or critical race theory? Or contemporary debates around aesthetics? This is about asking what can be learned or what can these various theoretical and methodological orientations do to our understanding of the phenomenon, how are they going to reconfigure where we stand on this issue of climate migration?

Are you primarily interested in working with policymakers?

The overarching aim of the Action is to enhance and improve understanding of climate change migration and that language is taken directly from the Cancun Adaptation Framework, which was agreed in 2010. This was language crafted by international negotiators of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which signals to the research community that ‘we negotiators think this is a pressing issue, but we don’t know anything about it’. There is this provision to enhance and improve our understanding of the phenomenon and that’s exactly the language that we’ve used in the action proposal. Our aim is to enhance and improve understanding of the phenomenon in the broadest sense.

Are we simply about informing government policy makers? No, the second objective we have is to furnish state and non-state actors with stateof-the-art empirical, theoretical, legal and policy

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research. In my mind that captures just about anybody with an interest in this issue so, yes, with policy makers, state actors that are interested within the context of the Action, but I wouldn’t want to limit the research to just that type of user.

For example, NGOS of all shape and description might be interested in what we’re doing. Similarly, academics working on other aspects of climate change and others working on various aspects of the social sciences might be interested.

How is climate migration part of an adaptation strategy?

The smart argument these days is that we have to think about migration as an adaptation strategy, a climate adaptation strategy rather than as a failure to adapt, and that sort of formulation is prevalent throughout the international debates.

For example, the International Organisation for Migration would advocate that kind of position and you see a similar kind of argument all over the progressive, liberal policy arguments: ‘We shouldn’t be afraid of migration, migration is a legitimate form of adaptation to climate change’. And that argument I think is predicated on the notion that migrants are agents of their own lives and migrants make decisions about where they want to go and so forth, so is there agency? Very much. And it’s located at the level of the individual, household and community.

Is there any policy in place to support people who have to re-locate as a consequence of climate change?

As far as I can tell, there is no such policy. And that’s for a host of different reasons not the least that there is no international legal definition on what a climate migrant is so in the absence of the definition how could there be a policy?

What are the ways in which climate migration is represented in society today from a critical race theory perspective?

The argument I’d make about this is three-fold.

I’ve identified three basic tropes that racialise the climate change migrant. The first is a pretty standard kind of trope, the trope of naturalisation -- the migrant is racialised through the erasure

IHRR Newsletter

of their history. The migrant’s migration is not the result of conscious choice, but is the result of some kind of natural disturbance. Often the point is made that it’s the most vulnerable who are forced to migrate as a result of climate change. Often in the discourse (not universal by any means) there is no reference made to the historical production of one’s vulnerability, you simply have a set of vulnerable people and my claim would be that by erasing the history of vulnerability, and conversely naturalising vulnerability, we’re committing a form of racialisation. The second trope is what I would call the loss of political status i.e. the loss of citizenship. There’s an important distinction to be made between the citizen and the non-citizen.

I would argue that that is a racialised distinction.

In the sense that the racial body historically is one that has no rights and so the classical examples of this are the denial of political rights to AfricanAmericans in the US. South African Apartheid would be another example.

‘Climate Migrant Camp’ in Hanover, Germany by artist Hermann Josef Hack. Since 2007 Hack has been installing these symbolic camps in major cities throughout the world to illustrate the plight of millions of people who will need to relocate due to the environmental effects of climate change.

A third and really important racialising trope in my view is the trope of ambiguity – the idea that the migrant simply can’t be known. It’s an indeterminate figure and that goes back to what we talked about initially about the impossibility of attributing causality of migration to climate Summer 2013

change. For example, there’s no way of predicting how many people are going to move as a result of climate change. Hence there’s a kind of quantitative ambiguity about the phenomenon, similarly the climate migrant is regularly constructed as a potential threat and until that potential is realised the figure remains in a kind of ambiguous position. In a sense it can’t be known. My argument is that by determining the figure of the migrant through the language of ambiguity has the effect of racialising the figure because it stands outside what it is to be human.

It’s got a kind of monstrous quality to it.

What progress do you think has been made in portraying the climate migrant in a much better light?

The framing of the issue around migration as a positive form of adaptation I think is quite productive. And I think the reason why that framing has emerged in the last four years is largely as a response to the militarised security variation on the discourse, which regularly positions the migrant as a threat to national security. Immediately when you do that you conjure up a policy intervention that would be around fortifying borders, deploying some kind of containment strategy to keep people in place and prevent them from moving. You’d take a kind of defensive posture. That can be very violent and unproductive and could generate a host of different risks and so on. The framing of migration as a positive adaptation response is a direct response to that kind of security framing, and indeed some of the architects of this line of reasoning make exactly this argument. What is required is a more productive framing of the issue.

Dr Andrew Baldwin is a Lecturer in the Department of Geography at Durham University and a Co-Director of IHRR. He also teaches on the MSc/MA Programmes in Risk (https://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/postgraduate/ riskmasters/) offered by Geography and the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience. For further information about COST Action 11011 Climate change and migration: knowledge, law and policy and theory visit its website at http://bit.ly/11gb7Ep. W.A.Baldwin@ durham.ac.uk

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Update on the MOVE project Dr Katie Thomson Department of Geography The MOVE project aims to develop and evaluate school-based interventions for increasing physical activity and psychological wellbeing amongst students at the start of secondary school.

Physical inactivity is a persistent and growing problem in adolescents. About one in ten schoolaged children suffer psychological problems such as anxiety, depression and conduct disorders.

Regular physical activity of at least a moderate intensity can enhance the psychological, as well as physical health of young people. However, to date, attempts to address this issue have met with little success.

MOVE is an exciting crossdisciplinary project involving researchers from the School of Education, the Department of Geography, IHRR and the School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Health. The two-year ESRC funded project which started in June 2012 has targeted secondary school-aged students in 51 schools throughout the North East of England. The project involves two school-based education interventions in a cluster, randomised control trial with schools allocated to one of the interventions, or both, or to a control group. A ‘participative learning’ intervention is delivered through Geography lessons which involves students in Year 7 (aged 11/12) investigating their own movement and activity patterns using Geographical Information Systems and combined GPS-motion sensor analysis.

We are also trialling the use of a peer mentoring intervention, whereby Year 7 students are mentored by Year 9 students (aged 13/14) and address issues such as goal setting and barriers to physical activity.

Both intervention approaches are six weeks in duration and involve innovative student participation and collaboration with teachers, as well as capturing data for the research.

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Measures of wellbeing and physical activity are being collected using online questionnaires and wearable motion sensors and will be used to evaluate the success of the project. In addition, important demographic information such as socio-economic status, active travel participation, ethnicity, body composition etc. is also being gathered. Data will be collected at several time points to assess the success of the interventions, with publications and presentations to both academic and lay audiences to follow.

Undertaking research within school environments is not without its challenges. The project has already launched in 46 schools throughout the North East, and the overwhelming response has

been positive however adopting a true trial-like approach within such a diverse range of schools has been complicated because every school differs in the way it schedules teaching and organises pupil work. Support for the project from both Local Authorities and the Royal Geographical Society and Geographical Association has been invaluable both to promote the project locally and also to provide high-quality resources to teachers which can be disseminated nationally once the study is complete.

For further information about the project, please visit our website (www.move-project.org.uk) or contact Katie Thomson (email: K.H.Thomson@durham.ac.uk; Tel: 0191 3341887).

IHRR Newsletter

Surviving Earthquakes in China: Research and Practice Professor Lena Dominelli School of Applied Social Sciences Co-Director, Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience The Wenchuan Earthquake The Wenchuan Earthquake on 12 May 2008 devastated swathes of the Sichuan Province landscape and caused thousands of deaths.

Various external bodies offered assistance in both the short and long-term. Among these was a group of academics and students from Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), led by Professor Angelina Yuen. They set up social work stations at several points in the Province to engage in growing resilience and assisting in the rebuilding processes at both individual and community levels. After the immediate relief period of responding to basic needs, these have provided a range of activities from psychosocial support to income generation ventures. Lena has been involved in training events associated with

these groups since 2009. Her latest contributions involved supporting local workers in the Lushan Earthquake in March 2013, attending the five-year celebrations of renewal at Sichuan University in Chengdu where the Institute of Disaster Risk Management (IDRM) was launched as a joint Sichuan University-PolyU venture; revisiting Yingxiu; and presenting at the community resilience seminar at the social work station in Jinpo. Lena gave three presentations at the IDRM Launch (see IHRR Presents).

Other speakers included current International Association of Schools of Social Work IASSW President, Professor Vimla Nadkarni, Immediate Past President of IASSW, Professor Angelina Yuen, and Dr Tim Sim from PolyU, who has undertaken a considerable amount of resilience work amongst schoolchildren, their parents and teachers in the town of Yingxiu. Margareta Wahlstrom,

Group photo of Yingxiu Primary School.

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Special Representative for the Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction at the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), Margareta Wahlström, delivered the opening address at the Sichuan University Launch of the Institute of Disaster Management and offered her congratulations to those who had brought the Institute into being and commended the excellent work being done following the Wenchuan Earthquake.

Lena revisited the Yingxiu School Project on several occasions during this trip and also presented at the celebratory seminar there. She spoke about Green Social Work, Environmental Justice and Disaster Reduction. As one of the honoured guests there, she was handed the traditional white and orange scarves and gifts were exchanged with the local dignitaries, including the Principal of Yingxiu School, whom she had met on previous occasions. She also spent time with the social workers at the Social Work Station and the young people who used the facilities there. There was a traditional dance involving all the visiting dignitaries and school children. It was sad leaving Yingxiu, but the realisation of the enormous resilience that had been built up over the previous five years which was strongly supported on a regular basis by the work of Tim Sim was very rewarding.

of strength and resilience, and offering them support and comfort. The goodbye dinner in Yingxiu was a pleasure as well as a sad event, as people celebrated the end of a phase in postdisaster interventions. Members of the group regaled each other with songs, including Lena who in the midst of total memory failure over her favourite emancipatory social change lyrics, sang one of her heritage songs, ‘Calabrisella’.

The ‘goodbyes’ were full of hope and goodwill, and anticipation of meeting again in future if research funding is forthcoming.

While progress on the development of the town, and its determination to retain its Tibetan Chinese culture was impressive, Lena was concerned about the potential landslide hazards

Lena with a disabled survivor of the Wenchuan Earthquake.

Young survivors of the Wenchuan Earthquake.

Earlier discussions with people who had been disabled during the Wenchuan Earthquake had reinforced this view. Their lives were a testament to the capacity of the human spirit to thrive against the odds and it was a privilege spending time with them, listening to their stories

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in the hills overlooking the town and took pictures to share with Durham colleague, Professor Alex Densmore and others in the Earthquake without Frontiers project. Yingxiu is nestled between two high mountain ranges on a very narrow plain with a major river flowing through it. The subsequent floods in the area in June 2013 also impacted on the Yingxiu area and residents are worried about three dam lakes that have formed in the vicinity as a result of recent seismic

IHRR Newsletter

and landslide activity The risk to the town could be extremely high and residents are petitioning the Chinese government for radical intervention, including a re-siting of the town. This would prove a major challenge because the options for new settlements in this region are restricted by the geophysical configuration of the area.

Lena has been in contact with Red Cross China and others from the Chinese Earthquake Administration, offering support via email and Skype. Parts of her Handbook on Disaster Intervention and Humanitarian Aid devised from research into the 2004 Tsunami in Sri Lanka were translated into Chinese and used there by various professionals working with affected residents. Others are welcome to translate this material is into further languages if they feel that the guidelines might assist relief workers elsewhere. These can be accessed through the IHRR website (see p.19).

Lena’s visit to the income generation and community development project in Jinpo coincided with the fifth anniversary celebrations of survival following the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake. The formal launch of this work station under the auspices of Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and Sun Yet Sen University was attended by local dignitaries including district leaders of the Communist Party. Work at this social work station is ably overseen by Dr Hok-bun Ku. Many earlier initiatives have borne fruit here, especially those involving women in earning a living through the sale of traditional embroidered objects.

Kazakstan and China. Worth noting is the Disaster Management Institute at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences including social work academics, the Kathmandu School of Social Work in Nepal, the China Earthquake Administration; the Sichuan UniversityHong Kong Polytechnic University and their Institute of Disaster Risk Management Consortium are major overseas partners.

EwF aims to undertake leading edge research in the domains covered by seismologists, landscape experts and social scientists with the aim of reducing the number of deaths and environmental damage caused by seismic and seismic related hazards. Building community resilience and learning from past events are crucial dimensions in this project. While some of this research is about exchanging existing knowledge – expert and lay, it is also anticipated that new knowledge will be uncovered and developed through the work of the EwF Project.

Earthquakes without Frontiers (EwF)

Increasing understanding of the different disciplinary traditions between project researchers is another concern the EwF advances through its engagement in interdisciplinary research. To promote this objective, the social scientists accompanied the seismologists on a field trip to the Weihe Basin in the Ordos Plateau near Xian, China when the EwF was launched there in early April 2013. The social scientists were shown how to identify seismic faults by the physical scientists while the social scientists showed them how to engage communities in impromptu meetings that were very revealing of the cultural and social dynamics of the rural villages being visited, and later in Loutraki, Greece, through interviews.

Earthquakes without Frontiers is an interdisciplinary project funded by the National Environmental Research Council (NERC) in the UK for a period of five years. It began in the autumn of 2012 and involves Durham University, Cambridge University, Oxford University, Hull University, Leeds University and Northumbria University as well as the Overseas Development Institute, the British Geological Survey and partners in countries in the Alpine-Himalayan Subduction Zone, particularly India, Nepal,

The EwF was formally launched in China in two locations – Xian, with the support of the School of Social Work at Northwest University; and Beijing with the support of the School of Social Work and PolyU’s Social Work Unit at Peking University. Both events were organised under the excellent leadership of Dr Tim Sim from PolyU who liaised with the physical scientists from the Chinese Earthquake Administration (CEA), practitioners in NGOs and social scientists including social workers. More work remains to be undertaken for the part of the EwF Project

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Earthquakes without Frontiers researchers. focused on China including the appointment of a Research Associate to assist with the research in the locations which will be chosen once the physical scientists have identified the sites in the Weihe Basin for further seismological research.

The China trip was followed by a trip to Loutraki in Greece where, unlike the Weihe Basin, faults have been extensively mapped and lessons learnt from previous earthquakes, several of which have occurred within living memory. This is unlike Xian where the last large earthquake was in 1556.

Supporting people who are surviving earthquakes is a complex, and emerging field of practice. Disaster interventions raise all manner of questions about environmental justice, social justice and sustainable socioeconomic development, as is also argued in Lena’s book, Green Social Work. This emerging field for professional social work theory and practice provides fertile ground for research

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and curriculum development if research-led interventions are going to be developed in the social work profession. These innovative initiatives provide a few footsteps in the journey forward.

Available for purchase online: Wiley http://eu.wiley.com/ WileyCDA/WileyTitle/ productCd-0745654002.html Amazon http://www.amazon. co.uk/Green-Social-WorkEnvironmental-Justice/ dp/0745654010

IHRR Newsletter

New Guides on Disaster Intervention and Human Rights Two new guides by Professor Lena Dominelli on disaster intervention are now available: The Handbook on Disaster Intervention and Humanitarian Aid and Ethical Guidelines for Research into Disaster Interventions and Humanitarian Aid. The Handbook on Disaster Intervention and Humanitarian Aid gives sound advice on understanding disaster and humanitarian aid interventions at multiple scales.

It discusses key players in disaster interventions such as social workers and the often multiple roles they play in providing relief to communities affected by disaster. This guide is based on research from the ESRC-funded Project Sri Lanka based at Durham University.

The Handbook focuses on the following topics plus much more: • Defining disasters and working in disaster situations • Guidelines for policymakers, practitioners and researchers • Engaging communities • Vulnerabilities and resilience

The second guide, Ethical Guidelines for Research into Disaster Interventions and Humanitarian Aid, reflects on the codes of ethics used by practitioners in disaster management and how to act ethically in disaster intervention research and cause no harm.

These guides are in draft form. Comments are welcome and can be sent to lena. dominelli@durham.ac.uk.

Both are available to download from IHRR’s website: • Handbook on Disaster Intervention and Humanitarian Aid (http://bit.ly/129J9gc) • Ethical Guidelines for Research into Disaster Interventions and Humanitarian Aid (http://bit.ly/13Ezw6E)

Publications Altwegg, R., Collingham, Y.C., Erni, B., & Huntley, B. (2013) Density-dependent dispersal and the speed of range expansions. Diversity and Distributions, 19(1): 60-68.

Antons, C. and Tomasic, R. (2013) ‘Introduction: Law Reform and Legal Change in East Asia’, in Law and Society in East Asia (ed.

by C Antons and R Tomasic) (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing), pp. xi-xxxiii.

Atkins, P.J., Robinson, P.A. Bovine tuberculosis and badgers in Britain: relevance of the past.

Epidemiology and Infection, 141, 7: 1437-1444 (Special Issue) Summer 2013

Baldwin, A. Risky natures, natures of risk.

Geoforum. 45:2-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. geoforum.2012.12.016 Baldwin, A. Vital ecosystem security: emergence, circulation, and the biopolitical environmental citizen. Geoforum. 44:52-61 Baldwin, A. Racialisation and the figure of the climate change migrant. Environment and Planning A. 45:1474-1490 Barlow, N.L.M, Shennan I., Long, A.J., Gehrels, W.R., Saher, M.H., Woodroffe, S.A., Hillier, C. (2013) Salt marshes as late Holocene

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tide gauges. Global and Planetary Change, 106:90110.

Curtis, S., Gesler, W., Wood, V., Spencer, I., Mason, J., Close, H., Reilly, J. (2013) Compassionate containment?

Balancing technical safety and therapy in the design of psychiatric wards. Social Science and Medicine (accepted, in press) Curtis, S., Pain, R., Fuller, S., Khatib, Y., Rothon, C. Stansfeld, S., Daya, S. (2013) Neighbourhood risk factors for Common Mental Disorders among young people aged 10-20 years: a structured review of quantitative research.

Health and Place, 20:81-90.

Sanyal, J., Carbonneau, P., Densmore, A.L. Hydraulic routing of extreme floods in a large ungauged river and the estimation of associated uncertainties: a case study of the Damodar River, India. Natural Hazards, 66:1153-1177 DOI 10.1007/s11069-012-0540-7 Clark, T., Wright, M., Iskoujina, Z. & Garnett, P. (2013) ‘JMS at 50: Trends over Time’. Journal of Management Studies. (in press) Dominelli, L. Mind the Gap: Built Infrastructures, Sustainable Caring Relations, and Resilient Communities in Extreme Weather Events. Australian Social Work, 66, 2:204-217 Fagg, J.H., Curtis, S.E., Cummins, S., Stansfeld, S.A., Quesnel-Vallee, A. (2013) Neighbourhood deprivation and adolescent self-esteem: Exploration of the ‘socio-economic equalisation in youth’ hypothesis in Britain and Canada. Social Science & Medicine, 91:168-177 Fletcher, B.J., Gornall, J.L., Poyatos, R., Press, M.C., Stoy, P.C., Huntley, B., Baxter, R. & Phoenix, G.K. (2012) Photosynthesis and productivity in heterogeneous arctic tundra: consequences for ecosystem function of mixing vegetation types at stand edges. Journal of Ecology 100: 441-451.

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Gentile, M. and Straughan, B. (2013) Structural stability in resonant penetrative convection in a Forchheimer porous material. Nonlinear Analysis, Real World Applications, 14, 397-401.

Gentile, M. and Straughan, B. (2013) Hyperbolic diffusion with Christov-Morro theory. Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (in press) Hancock S., Baxter R., Evans J. & Huntley B. (2013) Evaluating global snow water equivalent products for testing land surface models. Remote Sensing of Environment, 128: 107-117.

Hickey, G.L., Grant, S.W., Caiado, C.C.S., Kendall, S., Dunning, J., Pullis, M., Buchan, I., & Bridgewater, B. (2013) Dynamic Prediction Modelling Approaches for Cardiac Surgery.

Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes (in press) Hollow, M. (2013) ‘Crowdfunding and Civic Society in Europe: A Profitable Partnership?’.

Open Citizenship, 4:1, pp. 68–73.

Horwell, C.J., Williamson, B.J., Llewellin, E.W., Damby, D.E., Le Blond, J.S. The nature and formation of cristobalite at the Soufriere Hills volcano, Montserrat: implications for the petrology and stability of silicic lava domes.

Bulletin of Volcanology, 75, 3:696 Huntley, B., Allen, J.R.M., Collingham, Y.C., Hickler, T., Lister, A.M., Singarayer, J., Stuart, A.J., Sykes M., & Valdes, P.J. (2013) Millennial climatic fluctuations are key to the structure of last glacial ecosystems. PLoS ONE, 8(4): e61963.

Huntley, B., Allen, J.R.M., Barnard, P., Collingha, Y.C., Holliday, P.R. (2013) Species’ distribution models indicate contrasting lateQuaternary histories for southern and northern hemisphere bird species. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 22: 277-288.

IHRR Newsletter

Huntley, B., Long, A.J., Allen, J.R.M. (2013) Spatio-temporal patterns in Lateglacial and Holocene vegetation and climate of Finnmark, northernmost Europe. Quaternary Science Reviews, 70:158-175 Huntley, B., Baxter, R. (2013) ‘Vegetation ecology and global change’ in Vegetation ecology.

Eddy van der Maarel & Janet Franklin Chichester (Eds), Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell. 509-530.

Massey, C.I., Petley, D.N., McSaveney, M.J. Patterns of movement in reactivated landslides.

Engineering Geology, 159:1-19 Petley, D.N. Characterizing Giant Landslides.

Science, 339, 6126:1395-1396 Rosser N., Brain M.J., Petley D.N., Lim M. and Norman E.C. Coastline retreat via progressive failure of rocky coastal cliffs. Geology. doi:10.1130/G34371.1 Straughan, B. (2013) ‘Thermo-poroacoustic acceleration waves in elastic materials with voids’ in Encyclopedia of thermal stresses, Springer. (in press) Straughan, B. (2013) Anisotropic inertia effect in microfluidic porous thermosolutal convection, Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (in press) Straughan, B. (2013) Porous convection with local thermal non-equilibrium effects and Cattaneo effects in the solid. Proc. Roy. Soc. London A (in press) Straughan, B. and Harfash, A.J. (2013) Instability of Poiseuille flow in a porous medium with slip boundary conditions. Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (in press).

Straughan, B. (2013) Stability and uniqueness in double porosity elasticity. Int. J. Engng.

Science, 65: 1-8.

Summer 2013

Tomasic, R. and Akinbami, F. (2013) ‘Trust and Public Companies: Beginning to Reconceptualise Corporate Law in a Networked World’, Australian Journal of Corporate Law, 27: 233-261 Towl, G. and Crighton, D. The politics of mental health. Evidence-based mental health. 16, 3:59 Walker, R.J., Holdsworth, R.E., Imber, J., Faulkner, D.R., Armitage, P.J. Fault zone architecture and fluid flow in interlayered basaltic volcaniclastic-crystalline sequences. Journal of Structural Geology, 51:92-104 DOI:10.1016/j. jsg.2013.03.004 Walters, C.E., Straughan, B. & Kendal, J.R. (2013) Modelling alcohol problems: total recovery, Ricerche di Matematica, 62:33-53.

Waugh P. (2013) ‘The Naturalistic Turn, the Syndrome, and the Rise of the NeoPhenomenological Novel’, in Diseases and Disorders in Contemporary Fiction: The Syndrome Syndrome, T.J. Lustig and James Peacock (Eds.), Routledge: New York and London, pp. 17-35.

Waugh, P. & Hodgson, J. (2013) ‘On the Exaggerated Reports of the Decline of British Fiction’, The White Review, 7, pp. 69-89.

Wilson, D.T., Hawe, G.I., Coates, G., Crouch, R.S. A multi-objective combinatorial model of casualty processing in major incident response. European Journal of Operational Research, 230, 3:643-655 Wistow, J., Dominelli, L., Oven, K., Dunn, C., Curtis, S. (2013) The role of formal and informal networks in supporting older people’s care during extreme weather events. Policy and Politics. (accepted, in press).

Wood, V.J., Curtis, S.E., Gesler, W., Spencer, I.H., Close, H.J., Mason, J., Reilly, J.G. Creating ‘therapeutic landscapes’ for mental health carers in inpatient settings: A dynamic perspective on permeability and inclusivity. Social Science & Medicine, 91:122-129.

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IHRR Presents Professor Lena Dominelli gave three talks at the Institute of Disaster Risk Management (IDRM) in Sichuan University:

Activism, Centre for Research in Law, University of Bedfordshire, 20th June 2013. With Professor Roman Tomasic.

‘Multidisciplinary workings in disaster situations: Global experiences including IASSW initiatives (2008 to 2013)’

Dr Pojanath Bhatanacharoen presented on behalf of WP4: Metaphor and Agency ‘The Telling of Tipping Points: Differentiated StoryTelling in the Lectures of Management Gurus.’

European Group of Organizational Studies Conference, Montreal, July 2013.

‘Earthquake without Frontiers (EwF): Learning from each other in Xian, China and Loutraki, Greece (2013)’ ‘Disaster interventions and humanitarian aid in social work practice’ Dr Andrew Baldwin chaired a fascinating workshop at Durham entitled: ‘Race, affect and alterity: rethinking climate change-induced migration and displacement’. Andrew gave the welcome address for the workshop and closing remarks and one presentation: ‘Whiteness and the state of arrest: the affective logic of whiteness and the climate change migrant’.

Dr Claire Horwell and Claire Nattrass represented IHRR at the 5th International Conference on Medical Geology (MEDGEO2013) in Arlington, VA, USA in August. Dr Horwell convened and chaired the DUST session (Characterization and Health Impact of Natural and Anthropogenic Dust) in which both gave oral presentations.

Tipping Points Dr Folarin Akinbami gave the following presentations on behalf of WP2: Financial Crisis in the Banking Sector: ‘The Law, Politics and Economics of the diffusion of Innovation in retail financial services sector’, Payday Lending and its Impact in Leeds and West Yorkshire, School of Law, University of Leeds, 12th July 2013.

‘Retail Financial Products and the Global Financial Crisis’, Tipping Points and the Spread of Buzzwords, Labels and Ideas, Durham University, 2-3 July 2012.

‘The Global Financial Crisis as a Stress Test of the UK Law on Directors’ Duties’, Current Challenges in Corporate Governance: Between Regulatory Compliance and Shareholder

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Dr John Bissell gave the following presentations on behalf of WP3: Mathematics: ‘Tipping Points’ in the Dynamics of Socially Determined Behaviour, Physics of Emergent Behaviour (Institute of Physics), Brighton, United Kingdom’, 24th - 26th June 2013.

‘Shock Propagation in Hyperbolic ReactionDiffusion Systems’, XVII International Conference on Waves and Stability in Continuous Media, Levico, Italy, 17th - 19th June 2013.

‘Magnetised Transport and Magnetothermal Instability in Laser-Produced Plasmas, Plasma Physics Seminar’, University of York, 4th July 2013.

Dr Camila Caiado presented on behalf of WP3: Mathematics ‘Hospital Online Uncertainty and Stability Estimation’, 1st Annual International Conference on Health and Medical Sciences – ATINER, Athens, Greece, 6th-9th May 2013.

Dr Philip Garnett presented two talks and a poster on behalf of WP4: Metaphor and Agency: ‘The Language of Management: a longitudinal study of word usage in leading management journals from 1960’, NetSci13. Copenhagen, June 2013. Poster ‘Bursting a Bubble: Abstract Banking Demographics to Understand Tipping Points?’

Unconventional Computation and Natural Compuation 2013, CoSMoS Satellite, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milan, July 2013.

‘Tipping Points in Social, Economic and Biological Systems’. The Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University, May 2013.

Maddison, E.J., Long A.J., Woodroffe, S., Ranner, P.H. & Huntley, B. “Contemporary

IHRR Newsletter

chironomids in West Greenland lakes; implications for palaeoclimate studies” 12th International Workshop on Subfossil Chironomids, June 2013, New Forest.

Professor Ranald Michie presented on behalf of WP2: Financial Crisis in the Banking Sector “The City of London and Literature: Place, People and Pursuits in Historical Perspective,”

Gresham College Lecture, Guildhall Library, London, 16 May 2013.

Professor Brian Straughan of WP3: Mathematics was invited keynote speaker at the 17th International Conference on Waves and Stability in Continuous Media, Levico Terme, Italy, June 17-23, 2013

Awards and Grants Awards

IHRR Small Grants

Claire Nattrass the 2013 IMGA Gardner Research Grant ($2,000) and a student travel grant ($1500) to attend the 5th International Conference on Medical Geology in Arlington, VA, USA in August 2013. The IMGA Gardner Research Grant is awarded by the International Medical Geology Association and is sponsored by the International Registry of Pathology in honour of its late President, William A. Gardner. The grant will be used to fund Claire’s toxicology secondment at HeriotWatt University.

Asem Hassan received a grant from IHRR to present a paper on water content measurement in landslides and engineered slopes at the 18th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ICSMGE) in Paris, France, the leading international conference in the geotechnical engineering field.

Mohd Syazwan Md Rahim received a grant from IHRR to conduct field research in Malaysia needed for his PhD on the effects of climate change on slopes. The work was in collaboration with the National University of Malaysia.

Welcome to New Co-Directors Prof Patricia Waugh is a Professor in the Department of English Studies and leading expert in post-modernist literary theory. Pat leads Work Package 5 of the Tipping Points project: Critical Transitions and is involved with numerous research projects at Durham University in the humanities and social sciences.

Pat is author of The Naturalist Turn: Literary Cultures and the Life Sciences from 1900 to the Present, to be published in 2014.

Dr Andrew Baldwin is a Lecturer in the Department of Geography.

Andrew replaces Dr Alex Densmore (Geography) on the Board of Directors (Alex will continue to work with IHRR via the Earthquakes without Frontiers project). Andrew leads the project ‘Climate Change and Migration: Knowledge, Law, Policy and Theory’ (see Interview), has published numerous studies on the interrelationship between race, environment and politics and is an editor of the ground-breaking volume, Rethinking the Great White North? Spatialising history, historicizing whiteness.

Items for the Next Issue IHRR Newsletter only publishes what it knows about. If you have items for the next issue, please e-mail them by 18 October to: brett.cherry@durham.ac.uk.

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Cover image: Commemorative Wall for Rebuilding the Yingxiu Elementary School that was destroyed by the 7.9 Mw Wenchuan Earthquake in China in 2008.

Credit: Lena Dominelli

Contact Details: Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience Durham University Lower Mountjoy Durham DH1 3LE, UK Tel: +44 (0)191 3342257 Fax: +44 (0)191 3341801

Director of IHRR: Professor Sarah Curtis Editor: Brett Cherry Design: Cartographic Unit, Department of Geography