MaGrann Conference Program

THE THIRD ANNUAL MAGRANN RESEARCH CONFERENCE

Speaker List

Greg Bankoff
Associate Professor, School of Asian Studies, University of Auckland, New Zealand and Visiting Professor of Disaster Management, Coventry University, U.K.
Greg Bankoff works on society and the environment in Southeast Asia. In particular, he writes on environmental-society interactions with respect to disasters, natural hazards, development, resources and community-based disaster management. He is Associate Professor, University of Auckland and Visiting Professor of Disaster Management, Coventry University. Among his publications are Cultures of Disaster (2003) and Mapping Vulnerability (2004).

Stephen Bender
Organization of American States, Washington, D.C.
Until December 2005, Stephen O. Bender served as division chief in the Department for Sustainable Development (DSD), the project chief of the Natural Hazards Project, and advisor to the Director of DSD on issues of planning and environmental management. Before coming to OAS headquarters in 1981, Mr. Bender was project chief for the DSD in Uruguay. He worked as an international consultant from 1976 until 1979, and between 1973 and 1976 he was a founding member of the Rice Center for Community Design and Research at Rice University, and directed the Latin America Program. He was also a faculty member at the Rice University School of Architecture. Mr. Bender has worked in most OAS member states on urban and regional development planning issues including natural hazard and natural resource management; trade corridor development, urban and rural colonization settlement design; housing and potable water; and international technical cooperation program design, administration and training. In the last few years, Mr. Bender directed the Natural Hazards Project, the PROCORREDOR trade corridor and the EDUPLANhemisferico education sector risk management programs from their inception to international technical assistance and training programs. Mr. Bender holds a Bachelor of Architecture Degree from Notre Dame University (1968) and a Masters in Architecture in Urban Design from Rice University (1974).

Monalisa Chatterjee
Ph.D. Candidate, Graduate Program in Geography, Rutgers University
Monalisa Chatterjee is working on informal coping methods of poor urban flood victims. Her research examines the impact of globalization on changing nature of coping strategies and explores the possibility of integrating poor population with more formal mechanisms of risk redistribution and loss sharing.

Craig Colten
Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University
Craig Colten is the Carl O. Sauer Professor of Geography at Louisiana State
University. After completing his Ph.D. at Syracuse University in 1984, he spent a decade managing a research team devoted to tracing the historical geography of hazardous wastes in Illinois. Before returning to the academy he spent a few years with PHR Environmental Consultants in the Washington, DC area. His most recent book, An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature, won the 2006 J.B. Jackson Prize

Emily Gilbert
Canadian Studies and Department of Geography, University of Toronto
Emily Gilbert is an Assistant Professor in the Canadian Studies program and the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto. Her current research examines the proposals for deeper North American integration that have emerged since 9.11, with an especial focus on their implications for citizens and citizenship. She has published a number of journal articles in this area, and is editing, with Deborah Cowen, a related collection of papers entitled War, Citizenship, Territory (Routledge; forthcoming).

Lee Clarke
Associate Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University
Lee Clarke, Rutgers University, is author of Mission Improbable and Worst Cases, both from the University of Chicago Press. Clarke has written for, or been featured in, The Atlantic Monthly, Boston Globe, National Public Radio, the Washington Post, the NY Daily News, among others. He has been featured in the New York Times and Harvard Business Review. His edited volume, Terrorism and Disaster: New Threats, New Ideas, was published in 2003. Worst Cases was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education on September 14, 2005, in “New Orleans and the Probability Blues.” In August 2005 Clarke was honored with the Fred Buttel Distinguished Scholarship Award by the Environment and Technology section of the American Sociological Association. In Spring 2007 he will be the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University. Clarke has served on a National Academy of Science committee whose report, “Reopening Public Facilities After a Biological Attack: A Decision-Making Framework.” Clarke is currently writing about New Jersey's response to the anthrax attacks of 2001, the Department of Energy's "long term stewardship" program, the politics of planning for near earth objects, and problems concerning the national critical infrastructure.

Kerry R. Hinds
Washington , DC

Robin Leichenko
Associate Professor of Geography, Rutgers University

Dr Robin M. Leichenko is Associate Professor and Graduate Director in Geography at Rutgers University. Leichenko received a Ph.D. in Geography and an M.A. in Economics from Penn State University. Her research in economic geography addresses the effects of globalization and global environmental change on cities and regions in both advanced and developing countries. Dr. Leichenko is currently completing a book with Dr. Karen O’Brien, Double Exposure: Global Environmental Change and Globalization, under contract with Oxford University Press.

Richard Little
Director, The Keston Institute for Infrastructure School of Policy, Planning, and Development, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California
Richard G. Little is Director of the Keston Institute for Infrastructure, a policy research center at the University of Southern California. He is the immediate past Director of the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment of the National Research Council and has directed studies and lectured and written extensively on urban security strategy and decision making for extreme events. He is Member of the American Planning Association, the American Institute of Certified Planners, and the Society for Risk Analysis. He holds a BS in Geology and an MS in Urban-Environmental Studies, both from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

James K. Mitchell
Professor of Geography, Rutgers University
BIOGRAPHY: JAMES K. MITCHELL Professor Ken Mitchell grew up in Northern Ireland and came to the United States in 1965. He holds degrees in Geography and Community Planning from Queens University Belfast, the University of Cincinnati and the University of Chicago, including a Ph.D. under the direction of Gilbert White, the dean of North American natural hazards researchers. Ken became closely acquainted with the effects of extreme events through service on U.S. National Research Council post-disaster field study teams and via personal involvement in a commercial jet aircraft crash. Currently he has published more than 130 professional works on the human dimensions of environmental hazards including, among others: The Long Road to Recovery: Community Responses to Industrial Disaster (United Nations University Press, 1996); and Crucibles of Hazard: Megacities and Disasters in Transition (United Nations University Press, 1999). Ken chaired the National Research Council's Ad Hoc Committee on the International Decade for Natural Hazard Reduction (1985-87) and the 1986 Planning Conference for what later became the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR 1990-1999). He also chaired the International Geographical Union's Study Group on the Disaster Vulnerability of Megacities, as well as founding the Association of American Geographers Hazards Specialty Group, the international journal Global Environmental Change and co-founding the more recent quarterly Environmental Hazards. In 2005 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been an invited research visitor to Emergency Management Australia, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Aspen Institute of Environmental Studies, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (Boulder) and the East-West Center (Hawaii). In recent years he has delivered keynote speeches at international conferences in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and China. His 2004 address to the Vice Ministers and Vice Governors of China's provinces marks the first time since 1949 that a non-Chinese citizen has been granted direct and open access to this level of the PRC leadership. Among his recent research contributions are papers on: partnership as a foundational concept in the management of natural hazards; hazards research after Hurricane Katrina; rethinking disaster recovery in light of Tangshan's experience; implications of 9/11/01 and the War on Terror for hazards policy making; expanded notions of urban vulnerability; re-emerging hazards of Europe; and the twentieth century history of natural disasters in New Jersey.

Karen O'Brien
University of Oslo, Norway
Dr Karen O'Brien is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her research focuses on environmental change and human security, and on climate change vulnerability and adaptation in the context of globalization. Her publications include two books: Sacrificing the Forest: Environmental and Social Struggles in Chiapas (Westview, 1998) and Coping with Climate Variability: User Responses to Seasonal Forecasts in Southern Africa (Ashgate, 2003, edited with C. Vogel), as well as a forthcoming book with Robin Leichenko titled Double Exposure: Global Environmental Change and Globalization (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Karen M. O'Neill
Assistant Professor of Human Ecology, Rutgers University

E. L. Quarantelli
Emeritus Professor, Disaster Research Center , University of Delaware
E. L. (Henry) Quarantelli is Professor Emeritus, Disaster Research Center (DRC), University of Delaware. He co-founded DRC at Ohio State University in 1963, was its Director, and moved it to the University of Delaware in 1985. Most recent publication is Ron Perry and E.L. Quarantelli (eds) What is a disaster? New answers to old questions. Coming later this year is Gary Webb and E.L. Quarantelli (eds.) The Popular Culture of Disasters: Views From the Social Sciences and the Humanities. Both books published by Xlibris. Also co-editor with Rodriguez and Dynes of Handbook of Disaster Research to be published by Springer in August of this year.

Helen T. Sullivan, Ph.D.
Dept. of Psychology, Rider University
Dr. Sullivan, a Cognitive and Behavioral Psychologist, is concerned with developing ways to measure, understand, and improve learning and perception for sensory, cognitive, or situational disabilities. She is currently exploring issues faced by persons with disabilities during events such as disasters, and the role that technology can play in improved learning and communication of critical information. Dr. Sullivan received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Experimental Psychology from St. Louis University ( Missouri ,

USA

). Presently she is an adjunct Professor of Psychology at Rider University and Mercer County Community College ( New Jersey , USA ). Previously, Dr. Sullivan held research positions at the Central Institute for the Deaf in St Louis , St. Louis University , and Dalhousie University in Halifax , Nova Scotia .

I. R. Tanali
Senior Research Scientist, Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management, The George Washington University

Firoz Verjee
Since 1992, Firoz Verjee has specialized in the use of geospatial technologies for environmental and humanitarian risk management. Between 1995-2000, Mr. Verjee represented the Canadian Space Agency’s RADARSAT program in Asia, expanding the use of RADARSAT technology for locust monitoring (India, Kazakhstan), food security (India, Iran, China, North Korea, Japan), flood impact (India, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, Vietnam), cyclone impact (India, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Japan), oil spill tracking (Singapore, Japan, Taiwan), wild fires (China, Mongolia) & national security (numerous Asian government agencies). Since 2001 Mr. Verjee has been based in Washington, DC, providing full-time humanitarian intelligence services to InterSys Corporation, FOCUS Humanitarian Assistance and Norsat International. Project clientele have included Dept. of Defense, EPA, SAIC, World Bank, United Nations (Dep’t. of Peacekeeping Operations), and several commercial, academic and non-profit institutions. Mr. Verjee is currently pursing his Doctor of Science at the Institute for Crisis, Disaster & Risk Management at the George Washington University. He has also studied at Georgetown University (Washington, DC), University of British Columbia (Vancouver), and Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh). His extensive professional and personal travel through 70 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, give Mr. Verjee exceptional international awareness. His cultural depth are furthered by long-term residence in Canada/USA (25 yrs), Japan (1 yr), Kenya (4 yrs) & the UK (5 yrs).