Call for papers: Landscape-Scale Disasters, Emergency Response, and Regional Recovery 

The second conference of the International Network of Disaster Studies is to be held at Iwate University, on July 17-19, 2018, in Morioka, Japan. The conference theme will be Landscape-Scale Disasters, Humanitarian Response, and Regional Recovery.

The conference will include an optional field trip on July 19-20 to the City of Rikuzentakata, on the coast of Iwate prefecture, to see the remarkable recovery that city has engineered in the aftermath of the devastating tsunami after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011.

The International Network of Disaster Studies is not a formal organisation, but rather a loose association of university faculty and other senior researchers who get together to exchange ideas and discuss issues of mutual interest. At the initial conference in Haikou, China, in January 2017, participants came from more than a dozen countries.

The network is seeking to expand its reach to researchers from other countries; and hopes that over time, the conferences will rotate among countries and continents. It also hopes to expand the scope of research interests represented among conference participants and is seeking people interested not only in emergency response and risk governance, but also in humanitarian assistance and regional disaster recovery.

The International Network of Disaster Studies is seeking proposals for papers to be presented at the conference. Topics proposed should be broadly consistent with the conference theme, Landscape-Scale Disasters, Emergency Response, and Regional Recovery.

The conference welcomes contributions on emergency events or potential crises that threaten or affect societal resilience in large geographic areas. These include (but are not limited to): natural disasters, slow-onset crises, infrastructure or technology failures, epidemics, civil conflicts, and refugee flows. It is inviting proposals for panels, papers, or presentations that address prevention, risk reduction, and mitigation; domestic preparedness and emergency response; international humanitarian relief to survivors and affected communities; and recovery efforts in in neighborhoods, sub-national regions, or cross-national areas. Proposals for worthy topics that fall outside of the theme areas will also be considered.

Proposals should include:

• A brief paper topic/title
• An abstract of approximately 350-500 words
• three to four key words
• Name(s) of proposers
• Their positions and institutional affiliations
• Email addresses and other contact information
• Researchers should submit their proposals by March 19, 2018. Because of the broad international participation expected at the conference, proposals and papers should be submitted in English.
• Completed papers should be approximately 3,500-5,000 words.
• Papers will be due by June 20, 2018, in order to be included in the proceedings to be distributed to conference attendees.
• After the conference, the organisers expect to edit a collection of papers for publication as a special issue of a journal or as a book.

Please submit proposals via email here