This is a mandatory unit for HCRI students taking the MSc in International Disaster Management. This course addresses the increasing need to explore and critically understand the governance of disasters, which is often marginalised in disaster risk management theory and practice. In this way the course will focus less on logistics and operations and more on political and socio-economic processes that intersect with disaster management at all scales. The course will provide students with the theoretical concepts and knowledge to critically understand the complexities of disaster governance at multiple scales. This will be illustrated throughout with the engagement of applied case study contexts. The course will involve the study of governance processes from the perspectives of political economy and political ecology to understand how global political and economic systems shape experiences of disaster in different parts of the world. Furthermore, the course will focus on how disasters intersect with political space and political change by analysing how disasters can be opportunities to promote dominant political narratives, or indeed resist such narratives. The course will explore the ways various institutions and actors in many different capacities politicise the various phases of the disaster management cycle.

• Develop students’ understanding of the core issues concerning disaster management both in industrialized and developing nations.
• Provide students with the opportunity to conduct substantive disaster analysis that will be peer-reviewed.
• To analyse assumptions that underpin the legal, policy and institutional frameworks for disaster risk reduction.
• To evaluate the possibilities and limitations of tools and approaches to disaster risk reduction at different scales.
• To suggest strategies for dealing with disasters.

• Understand the links between governance, disaster politics and disaster management
• Identify key theories and research that demonstrate different approaches to disaster governance
• Appreciate how and why disasters are often apoliticisised in the theoretical and practical considerations of disaster management and the barriers this creates to effective disaster management strategies
• Understand how the political stratification occurring within the different phases of the disaster cycle affects different actors in different ways
• Critically understand how disasters are represented in policy and how they set agendas for future policy development
• Develop an awareness of how other global processes such as conflicts and economic crises intersect with the disaster management cycle

• Critically interrogate the literature related to disaster governance, particularly how theory shapes practice
• Develop a critical understanding of the relationship between politics and disasters, using contemporary and historical case studies
• Compare and contrast different post disaster political spaces
• Critically reflect on how and why different narratives of disasters are mainstreamed or marginalised and how this is connected to the wider political economy of place
• Articulate and defend their own positions on the value and importance of linking governance, disaster politics and disaster management 

• Develop an understanding of how politics can be incorporated into disaster management strategies
• Understand how academic work relates to practice and interrogate the effectiveness of apolitical disaster management strategies
• Demonstrate analytical and debating skills with peers and tutors through tutorials and online discussions and forums
• Show effective use of library resources drawing on relevant academic and grey literature, and seeking out information through the use of virtual sources to underpin learning and gathering information for written work.

• Develop communication skills for a variety of audiences
• Work effectively in a team and engage stakeholders
• Develop, plan and achieve individual research outcomes
• Develop analytical skills and the ability to articulate ideas verbally and in writing
• Develop confidence articulating ideas and opinions during group discussions

• oral and written feedback on group presentations
• written feedback on individual essay (assignment 1) that will be returned to students according to SALC guidelines and time limits
• additional one-to-one feedback (during the consultation hour or by making an appointment)

Birkland, T., (2006), Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change after Catastrophic Events, Georgetown University Press, New York

Jones E.C and Murphy, A.D. (eds), (2009) The Political Economy of Hazards and Disasters (Society for Economic Anthropology Monograph Series), AltaMira Oress, New York

Klein, N., (2007), The Shock Doctrine, Penguin Group, London

Lundahl, M., (2013), The Political Economy of Disaster: Destitution, Plunder and Earthquake in Haiti (Routledge Explorations in Economic History), Routledge, London

Pelling, M. and Dill, K., (2009), Disaster politics: tipping points for change in the adaptation of sociopolitical regimes, Progress in Human Geography, pp1-7

Tierney, K., (2012), Disaster Governace: Social, Political and Economic Dimensions, Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Vol. 37: 341-363