We are thrilled to announce that our session for the NEEDS Conference in Enschede (NL), October 30 - November 3, has been accepted!

As presented on the NEEDS conference website (https://www.utwente.nl/en/needsconference/Needs-Conference-2023), the conference “aims to explore the status quo and to foster new approaches to disaster research and management. It wishes to harness its broad, interdisciplinary expertise by gathering disaster researchers from academic institutions and practitioners from the disaster management community (European and beyond) to build networks and discuss the most pressing issues in disaster research across research and practice oriented domains.”

One of our sessions revolves around the ‘cultural turn’ that may be occurring, and would in any case be necessary, in disaster studies. Cultural factors play a crucial role in disaster prevention and response, yet are often overlooked. With the overall question of ‘what is the role of culture in building disaster resilient societies‘ in mind, we welcome contributions which explore culture and disaster from epistemological, socio-historical and scalar perspectives. We do aim for a format with room for interactive activities, next to the more ‘classic’ paper presentations.

More on the session "A cultural turn in disaster studies? Exploring epistemological, socio-historical and scalar perspectives" here: https://www.utwente.nl/en/needsconference/panel-decriptions/

The link to abstract submission here: https://www.utwente.nl/en/needsconference/registrationform-abstracts

We look forward to receiving your abstracts via the portal until 15th of June latest, and would be very pleased if you can share this call further with your network.

Isabelle Desportes, Verena Flöchinger, Parisa Jafari, and Vicente Sandoval
Disaster Research Unit, Freie Universität Berlin