September 6, 2006 Source: :
http://www.brandonu.ca/news/article.asp?A_ID=1087 BU Applied Disaster and Emergency Studies profs in high demand for their expertise BRANDON, MB – As the Brandon University Applied Disaster and Emergency Studies (A-DES) program is one of only a few of its kind in North America, it should come as no surprise that professors in the program are in high demand to serve as experts at conferences and other speaking engagements around North America following the Hurricane Katrina disaster of last year. Dr. Elaine Enarson, who joined the Brandon University A-DES department in January 2006, has been particularly busy this spring: · On March 8, Dr. Enarson served as the keynote speaker at the Rutgers University Women’s Rights Law Review on women and Katrina in New Jersey.
· On March 20, she was a speaker at the National Academies of Science Disaster Roundtable on Community Resilience in Washington, D.C., speaking on highly vulnerable populations.
· From April 6 to 8, Dr. Enarson served as a visiting faculty member and participated in two days of training for the Battered Women’s Justice Project on Disaster-related Relocation, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice and held in Nashville, Tennessee.
· At the Environment and Society Symposium held at the University of Nevada Reno from April 20 to 21, Dr. Enarson delivered an evening public lecture titled "In the Eye of the Storm: Gender, Race and Disaster Resilience in Hurricane Katrina," and lectured to women’s studies and environmental studies students. "Dr Enarson's contribution to ADES is two-fold," says BU Applied Disaster and Emergency Studies Chair John Lindsay, "she brings a critical academic perspective backed by her own outstanding research and she understands the importance of sharing her knowledge with practitioners in order to see tangible improvements in our communities." Dr. Enarson earned her doctorate in sociology from the University of Oregon and is the author of Woods-Working Women: Sexual Integration in the U.S. Forest Service (1984). She is the past director of the Nevada Network Against Domestic Violence and the University of Nevada Reno women’s studies program. Her disaster research focuses on grassroots social vulnerability and disaster resilience with a special interest in gender. Research publications based on hurricane Andrew, the 1997 Red River flood in Canada and in the U.S., and the 2001 Gujarat, India earthquake have explored the economic impacts of disasters on women, women’s disaster housing and economic recovery, violence against women in disasters, and women’s political mobilization and cultural interpretation of disasters. She was lead course developer for FEMA’s on-line class on social vulnerability, project manager of an action research project with low-income women in the Caribbean on disaster resilience, and developer of the new on-line Gender and Disaster Sourcebook. Dr. Enarson co-edited The Gendered Terrain of Disaster: Through Women’s Eyes (1997) and is an international consultant on gender equality and disaster risk reduction. She taught sociology and women’s studies in the Boulder/Denver area until her recent move to Canada to teach full time in the Applied Disaster and Emergency Studies Department of Brandon University. She has a strong interest in community health, sustainability, and gender and climate change. Her most recent project is a book in preparation on The Women of Katrina. Established officially in 2002, the Brandon University Applied Disaster and Emergency Studies (A-DES) program was the first degree program of its type in Canadian universities. A-DES provides the skills and knowledge necessary to enable graduates to intervene effectively in natural and man-made disasters that occur throughout the world. Graduates will be able to assist with the emergency responses needed to manage the crisis, and then provide support to the people affected by the disaster as they try to get their lives back to normal. The A-DES program at Brandon University adopts a Liberal Arts and Sciences approach to foster an appreciation for the interdisciplinary nature of this field. Students are introduced to the broad range of technological, cultural and environmental risks of disasters. There is no other comparable program available in Canada at the present time. For more information, please contact: John Lindsay
Chair, Applied Disaster and Emergency Studies
Brandon University
Phone: (204) 571-8555
Email: lindsayj@brandonu.ca Kelly Stifora
Communications Officer
Brandon University
Phone: (204) 727-9762
Email: communications@brandonu.ca - 30 -
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