DISASTER RESEARCH CENTER

DRC 60th Anniversary Featured Presentations

Featured Presentations to Spark
Thinking on Imagined Futures

DRC 60th Anniversary Featured Presentations

In honor of the 60th anniversary of the Disaster Research Center, we invited scholars, poets, and practitioners to set the stage on the first morning of the workshop. These speakers sparked our conversations about not only solving the problems of today, but addressing the disasters on the immediate horizon and of the future that lurks in the distance. 

Amish Trivedi

Amish Trivedi, assistant professor of English and creative writing at the University of Delaware, reads from his most recent book – FuturePanic – to set the stage at the Disaster Research Center’s 60th Anniversary Workshop. 

Angela Gladwell

Angela Gladwell of FEMA’s Office of Policy and Program Analysis gives this featured presentation on using the practice of strategic foresight to identify future threats and opportunities and help prepare FEMA and the field of emergency management for a future of unprecedented change and uncertainty. Watch this video to learn about some of the trends that FEMA is following, and how to use strategic foresight to navigate uncertainty with adaptability and resilience. You can learn more at FEMA Strategic Foresight 2050.

Jennifer Lazo

Jennifer Lazo of the City of Los Angeles Emergency Management Department gives this featured presentation describing the novel circumstances facing emergency managers and how they are planning to contend with them. From a growth in supporting asylum seekers, to persistent wildfire threats, to emerging technologies such as machine-to-machine actions: Watch to learn how researchers can help “now we are everything” emergency managers better deal with future threats.

Rachel Davidson 

Rachel Davidson of the University of Delaware gives this featured presentation describing a major challenge to our progress in managing natural disaster risk: so much of what we have learned about how to prevent natural disasters has not been fully implemented. Watch to hear her proposal for designing an effective, sustainable disaster risk management system that can help address this problem.

Jenniffer Santos- Hernández

Jenniffer M. Santos-Hernández of the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras gives this featured presentation where she shares observations on her practice as a field disaster researcher in Puerto Rico. Her presentation highlights the need for convergence science, particularly the importance of the social sciences, to enhance community engagement around disaster reduction.

Felicia Henry 

Felicia Henry of the University of Delaware (joining American University in Fall, 2024) gives this featured presentation on the use of artivism, or arts-based activism, to give us (re)new(ed) tools to engage with the changing climate and possibilities to address disasters. Watch to learn how artivism offers possibilities for community-led, driven, and designed research by highlighting how disasters impact the most marginalized of our society.

Giuseppe Lelow

Giuseppe Lelow of Italy’s Università Politecnica delle Marche and visiting scholar at the Disaster Research Center of the University of Delaware, presents on the relationship between emergency management and Information technology. Using the metaphor of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, he explores the challenges and potentials of crowd-sourced data. 

Mitch Stripling

Mitch Stripling of Columbia University discusses the relationship between disasters and social change. Emergency managers may want to avoid it, but the actions we take can’t help triggering social change in one form or another. Watch and learn how the future of disaster planning must consider this impact, and how managing toward a hopeful future instead of recovering an imagined past can make any social change that occurs more egalitarian.

A.R. Siders

A.R. Siders – a “climate geek” at the University of Delaware – talks about the need for creativity and play to advance the kind of innovative thinking and ambitious adaptation demanded by climate change. Watch to see what Star Trek, haikus, climate fiction, and video games have to teach us about adapting and choosing our new future. 

Make a Gift

A UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE RESEARCH CENTER
UD Research Office • 302-831-4007