Episode overview

The Season 10 finale welcomes disaster anthropologist Susanna Hoffman, who wrote the preface to the hosts' forthcoming edited volume, Contemplating Catastrophe. Drawing on a career spanning cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and literature, the episode reflects on the depth of culture in disaster studies, the limits of narrow disciplinary silos, and what the field needs to move from fragmented case studies toward broader theoretical and policy impact.

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Core discussion highlights

Episode overview

Episode 10 continues the season's regional focus with a conversation grounded in India and the wider Global South, bringing together a scholar of gender, trauma, and displacement and a development researcher working across climate change, migration, and disasters. The episode explores how literature, capability theory, and self-reflective practice reshape how disaster scholars understand resistance, complicity, and care.

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Episode overview

Episode 9 turns to South and Southeast Asia, bringing together an early-career gender and disaster risk scholar and a senior interdisciplinary disaster governance scientist. Drawing on postcolonial theory, hybridity, and the politics of knowledge production, the episode examines how colonial legacies continue to structure vulnerability, gender exclusion, and state power in the region — and how discourse itself becomes a tool of both domination and resistance.

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Key themes

Core discussion highlights

Episode overview

Hosts

Jason von Meding

Ksenia Chmutina

Guests

Jake Cadag — Assistant Professor, University of the Philippines; scholar of community participation, postcolonial disaster studies, and grassroots disaster risk reduction

Caroline Contillo — disaster researcher, resilience trainer, and disaster mental health practitioner; lead trainer with the New York Office of Mental Health

Key themes

Postcolonial and Indigenous ways of knowing disasters

Disaster, authoritarianism, and political repression

Activism, scholarship, and public sociology

Buddhism, interdependence, and socially engaged practice

Mutual aid, disaster mental health, and collective recovery

Disaster risk creation through development and infrastructure

Moving beyond reformism toward structural change

Core discussion highlights

Jake Cadag reflects on rediscovering Filipino-language scholarship and postcolonial social science, emphasizing reclamation rather than rejection of global knowledge.

Disaster is framed as inseparable from political economy, authoritarian governance, and long-standing systems of marginalization in the Philippines.

Jake discusses Walden Bello as a public sociologist whose work connects development, dictatorship, and disaster risk creation, and whose activism illustrates the risks scholars face under repressive regimes.

The conversation highlights how political persecution and “red-tagging” of NGOs and academics can depoliticize disaster risk reduction and weaken grassroots participation.

Caroline Contillo introduces Thích Nhất Hạnh as a thinker whose concept of interbeing challenges the idea of detached, objective disaster research.

Socially engaged Buddhism is discussed as a framework for witnessing suffering without withdrawal—and for allowing compassionate action to emerge from that witnessing.

Mutual aid and disaster mental health are explored through relational perspectives, including interpersonal neurobiology and community-based recovery.

The episode challenges “bounce back” versions of resilience, arguing instead for recovery that confronts structural violence, inequality, and capitalism.

Both guests emphasize that disasters reveal deeper systemic failures—and that meaningful recovery requires political engagement, not neutrality.

Episode overview

Hosts

Jason von Meding

Ksenia Chmutina

Guests

Chris Gomez — Professor at Kobe University; head of the Sabo Laboratory; scholar of sediment-related hazards, ethical disaster management, and interdisciplinary disaster research

Wes Cheek — Assistant Professor of Emergency Management, Massachusetts Maritime Academy; scholar of community, post-disaster reconstruction, and urban theory

Key themes

Japan as a site of rich but underexplored disaster thinking

Reading beyond disaster studies: political theory, history, anarchism, and Marxism

Social contracts, sovereignty, and disaster as rupture

Infrastructure, concrete, and the political economy of risk

Radical alternatives in Japanese history

Disaster, authoritarianism, and state violence

Hope, resistance, and refusal in dark times

Core discussion highlights

Chris Gomez reflects on returning to classic political theory, particularly Hobbes, to rethink disaster as a breaking point in the social contract between the state and communities.

The discussion situates Japan’s long reliance on concrete-heavy disaster infrastructure within broader histories of governance, economic stability, and political legitimacy.

Chris introduces Masao Akagi, often described as the “father of Sabo,” emphasizing how engineering practice, drawings, and material interventions function as forms of knowledge alongside academic texts.

The episode challenges narrow definitions of scholarship, arguing that disaster knowledge is produced through multiple modalities, not only words and citations.

Wes Cheek discusses Ōsugi Sakae as a key figure of Japan’s Taishō period, highlighting a moment when alternative political futures—anarchist, socialist, anti-authoritarian—were still possible.

The conversation explores how the Great Kantō Earthquake was used as cover for state violence, repression, and the targeting of leftists and ethnic Koreans.

Marxism is discussed as a crucial starting point for disaster scholarship, particularly for understanding vulnerability, power, and the non-natural origins of inequality.

Both guests reflect on contemporary Japan, including demographic decline, economic contraction, tourism, immigration, and the rise of nationalist and exclusionary politics.

Disasters are framed not only as physical events but as moments that expose deeper social fractures, discrimination, and political choices.

Episode overview

Hosts

Jason von Meding

Ksenia Chmutina

Guests

Giovanni Gugg — cultural anthropologist and lecturer in urban anthropology, working on risk cultures, disaster response, and activism in vulnerable urban territories

Anna Süsina — Lecturer in Media and Creative Industries, Loughborough University; scholar of communication, social change, participatory media, and power asymmetries

Victor Marchezini — sociologist at the Brazilian Early Warning Center and professor at INPE; leading voice in the sociology of disasters in Brazil

Key themes

Latin American and Indigenous intellectual traditions in disaster studies

Reading beyond English-language and Eurocentric canons

Development, coloniality, and the production of vulnerability

Plural futures, pluriverses, and alternative ontologies

Dialogue, pedagogy, and critical hope

Translation, language, and epistemic justice

Activism, civic responsibility, and scholarship

Core discussion highlights

Guests reflect on their reading practices, emphasizing podcasts, oral traditions, hard-copy books, and texts emerging from social movements, Indigenous communities, and Latin American critical scholarship.

Victor Marchezini discusses the influence of Paulo Freire, highlighting dialogue, pedagogy, oppression in everyday life, and the importance of critical hope in teaching, research, and disaster practice.

Giovanni explores Arturo Escobar’s critique of development and his concept of the pluriverse, applying it to disaster risk and urbanization around Mount Vesuvius. Disaster planning is framed as a cultural and political process, not only a technical one.

Anna Süsina reflects on Indigenous thinking through Ailton Krenak, emphasizing relational worldviews, the human–non-human relationship, and the idea that the dominant relationship with Earth is itself a disaster.

The conversation challenges the asymmetry between “scientific” and Indigenous knowledge, arguing for equal legitimacy and meaningful translation rather than extraction or tokenism.

Translation is discussed as both a political challenge and a creative possibility—across languages, disciplines, generations, and even between humans and non-humans.

The guests collectively stress the dangers of time compression in disaster scholarship, where urgency crowds out long-term thinking, historical analysis, and ethical engagement.

Episode overview

Hosts

Jason von Meding

Ksenia Chmutina

Guests

Danielle Rivera — Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, UC Berkeley; scholar of environmental and climate justice working with rural and unincorporated marginalized communities

Dewald van Niekerk — Professor at North-West University (South Africa); founder and editor-in-chief of Jàmbá: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies; leading scholar of disaster risk in Southern Africa

Key themes

Black scholarship as central—not peripheral—to disaster studies

Structural racism, historicity, and the “disaster before the disaster”

Community resistance, agency, and epistemologies of survival

Ubuntu, mutual support, and collective responsibility

Rejecting colorblind and event-focused disaster narratives

Long-term engagement versus extractive disaster research

Bridging scholarship, practice, and policy

Core discussion highlights

Danielle Rivera discusses Clyde Woods’ work on the Mississippi Delta, emphasizing the importance of deep, place-based scholarship that traces disasters through long histories of structural racism, political economy, and resistance.

Woods’ concept of “the disaster before the disaster” is explored as a way of understanding disasters as outcomes of deliberate abandonment and plantation logics rather than isolated failures or surprises.

The conversation challenges dominant disaster narratives that center elite losses while marginalizing the experiences of poorer and racialized communities.

Dewald van Niekerk reflects on his engagement with Black Consciousness thought and the work of Mamphela Ramphele, highlighting kindness, dignity, and community as starting points for resilience.

Ubuntu is discussed as a philosophy emphasizing interdependence, shared humanity, and collective problem-solving—offering important lessons for disaster risk reduction and recovery.

Both guests critique paternalistic and technocratic approaches to disaster management, arguing for community-led, non-extractive, and context-sensitive engagement.

The episode reflects on the evolution of disaster studies, calling for deeper interdisciplinarity, stronger links between theory and practice, and greater honesty about power, inequality, and history.

Episode overview

Hosts

Jason von Meding

Ksenia Chmutina

Guests

Ruth Kinna — professor of political theory and historian of ideas, specialist in anarchism, utopianism, and activism

Alex Christoyannopoulos — reader in Politics and International Relations, specialist in anarcho-pacifism, Tolstoy, and religious anarchism

Key themes

Anarchism as a political and ethical framework for disaster thinking

Mutual aid as solidarity, not service delivery

Violence, nonviolence, and the role of the state in producing harm

Bottom-up governance, trust, and community agency

Climate change, adaptation, and early anarchist thought

Appropriation of radical ideas by states and institutions

Resilience, care, and the politics of responsibility

Core discussion highlights

Ruth Kinna discusses Peter Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid and its relevance to disasters, emphasizing cooperation, interdependence, and locally rooted knowledge.

The conversation reframes disasters as moments that expose existing power relations, where mutual aid often outperforms slow or absent state responses—especially in marginalized communities.

Kropotkin’s early engagement with environmental change and food security is explored, highlighting his concern with climate, production, migration, and adaptation well before contemporary climate discourse.

Alex Christoyannopoulos reflects on Leo Tolstoy’s anarcho-pacifism, focusing on violence as a structural feature of the state and on moral responsibility, complicity, and refusal.

Nonviolence is discussed not only as a moral stance but as a practical foundation for community resilience, collective decision-making, and resistance.

Both guests critique the appropriation of concepts like mutual aid, care, and resilience by governments and institutions, arguing that such moves often strip these ideas of their political substance.

The episode challenges disaster scholars to take seriously activism, disobedience, and bottom-up organizing as central—rather than peripheral—to disaster risk and response.

Episode overview

Hosts

Jason von Meding

Ksenia Chmutina

Guests

Zachary Loeb — historian of technology and disasters, Purdue University

Kevin Grove — professor of geography, Florida International University

Key themes

Technology, risk, and the invention of new forms of catastrophe

Urbanism and disaster as historically produced conditions

Reading beyond disaster studies: technology critique, political geography, Black studies, and Caribbean thought

Space, time, and temporality in disaster scholarship

Warnings, prediction, and why societies fail to listen

Power, knowledge, and whose experiences of space and time count

Interdisciplinarity as a core strength of disaster studies

Core discussion highlights

Zachary Loeb reflects on how critiques of technology—shaped by thinkers like Lewis Mumford and Paul Virilio—frame disasters as built into technological systems themselves, rather than accidental failures.

The idea that every technological invention also invents its own accident becomes a lens for understanding contemporary risks, including digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence.

Kevin Grove discusses how moments of discomfort and contradiction in fieldwork can become catalysts for deeper theoretical engagement, particularly through biopolitics, Caribbean studies, and Black geographies.

Edward Soja and Doreen Massey are explored as thinkers who radically reshaped how scholars understand space, difference, and the politics of knowledge production.

The episode challenges linear disaster timelines by introducing multiple, co-existing temporalities—slow disaster, repetition, duration, and suspended presents—especially as experienced by marginalized communities.

Space is framed as lively, relational, and unfinished, while time is shown to be unevenly distributed and historically produced through violence, colonialism, and capitalism.

Episode overview

Hosts

Jason von Meding

Ksenia Chmutina

Guests

Kaira Zoe Alburo-Cañete — Filipino feminist scholar, Senior Researcher at the Humanitarian Studies Centre (ISS, Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Susamma Seeley — crisis and disaster human services specialist; PhD candidate in Disaster Science and Management (University of Delaware)

Key themes

Feminism as a pathway for expanding disaster scholarship

Reading, curiosity, and discovery beyond disciplinary canons

Privilege, access, and barriers to knowledge production

Listening, hearing, and acting on marginalized voices

Feminist methodologies: reflexivity, positionality, care, and solidarity

Decolonial and postcolonial feminist perspectives

The personal, emotional, and everyday dimensions of disasters

Core discussion highlights

Guests reflect on their reading trajectories and how lived experience, storytelling, and curiosity shape feminist scholarship.

Feminism is discussed not as a single framework but as a diverse set of approaches that open space for multiple voices, emotions, and forms of knowledge.

Kaira Alburo-Cañete discusses bell hooks, emphasizing feminist standpoint epistemology, intersectionality, marginality as a site of resistance, and the role of love, care, and solidarity in disaster research.

Susamma Seeley discusses Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, focusing on subalternity, listening as a political act, and the challenge of creating spaces where marginalized voices can be heard and acted upon.

The conversation highlights reading as a collective, social practice—through discussion, listening (including audiobooks), and shared curiosity.

Participants reflect on how feminist and decolonial perspectives can inform more equitable research partnerships, especially across Global North–Global South contexts.