Call for Abstracts: ‘Doing Disaster Research Well – Critical Reflections on the Concepts and Methods’ NEEDS 2018 in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Call for Abstracts: ‘Doing Disaster Research Well – Critical Reflections on the Concepts and Methods’ NEEDS 2018 in Amsterdam, Netherlands The technology and management research group of La Salle – URL (GREITM), together with the Disaster Research Center of the University of Delaware, and the Risk and Resilience Group of ETH Zurich, will be leading a panel on reflexive methodology in disaster research in the forthcoming Northern European Conference on Emergency and Disaster Studies on 20-23 March 2018 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The conference is hosted and organized by the Department of Organization Science of VU University Amsterdam. The panel, ‘Doing Disaster Research Well: Critical Reflections on the Concepts and Methods’, aims to bring together scholars and practitioners engaged in disaster studies and open up a conversation on how the conduct of disaster research can drive social impact. The panel will be devoted to engaging issues that might include, but are not limited to the following:

• How can findings from disaster research be made significant to society?
• How can we bridge the divides within the disaster research community (e.g. natural vs. man-made hazards; technical vs. social aspects of disaster risk; etc.)?
• What types of data can be used to advance the science of disasters?
• What are considerations for conducting ethical disaster research?
• What are the considerations for conducting research after the disaster has occurred? What lessons can be learned from quick response research?
• What are the considerations for ensuring that disaster indicators such as risk and vulnerability are grounded in empirical evidence?
• Are there implications for conducting research in developing countries as opposed to developed countries?
• Is there a role for Big Data in disaster research?
• How can one use non-traditional sources of data (e.g. oral histories, archives, memory, diaries, secondary media such as movies and novels) in theorizing disasters?

Interested scholars and practitioners are invited to submit paper abstracts through the NEEDS Conference site (http://www.needs2018.com/submitanabstract/) on or before 1 December 2017. Complete details on the call for abstracts can be found here: http://www.needs2018.com/doing-disaster-research-well-critical-reflections-on-the-concepts-and-methods/.