EP #84 - How Do We Talk about Disasters? - Ksenia Chmutina and Jason von Meding

Today, I talk about the language we use to discuss disaster and why it matters with Disasters Deconstructed podcast co-hosts
Ksenia Chmutina and Jason von Meding.

 

Dr Jason von Meding is an Associate Professor at the University of Florida and a founding faculty member of the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER). Before moving to the U.S. he spent 6 years at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where he established the Disaster and Development Research Group, and
worked with communities in the Aisa-Pacific region using participatory methods to study disaster risk. In the past 5 years he has developed a focus on communicating science to non-academic audiences, writing for blogs, magazines and newspapers, creating video content and through the Disasters: Deconstructed podcast.

 

Dr Ksenia Chmutina a Senior Lecturer in Sustainable and Resilient Urbanism at the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering, Loughborough University, UK. She’s originally from Russia, and before
moving to the UK, she lived in China, where she got her Masters. Her research explores the processes of
disaster risk creation and politics of disasters, especially under the pressures of neoliberalism, urbanisation and climate change. Ksenia uses her work to draw attention to the fact that disasters are not natural. Ksenia is a co-author of a textbook ‘Disaster Risk Reduction for the Built Environment’ (Wiley, 2017) and a co-host of a podcast ‘Disasters: Deconstructed’.