Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast

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.
Hosts
Jason von Meding
Ksenia Chmutina
Guests
Sneha Krishnan — Professor, O.P. Jindal Global University; interdisciplinary scholar of environment, humanitarian response, and public health, with a focus on gender-sensitive, trauma-informed approaches to displacement
Claudia Santos — researcher and practitioner working across climate change, migration, development, and disasters; co-founder of The Upstand, a social impact agency built on relational, community-centered methods
Key themes
Fiction, dissent, and the politics of storytelling
Capabilities, freedom, and the construction of vulnerability
Resistance as a condition for justice
Complicity, power, and the "double agent" researcher
Care, sensitivity, and knowing when (not) to act
Institutional incentives versus community needs
Creative and participatory research methods
Hope, courage, and collective responsibility
Core discussion highlights
Sneha Krishnan discusses Arundhati Roy and Amitav Ghosh, arguing that fiction and dissent are central to disaster scholarship — Roy's prosecution for her activism and Ghosh's framing of the climate crisis as a "crisis of imagination" both push the field to reckon with who gets to tell stories about disaster and its long aftermath.
Krishnan reflects on reading and creative expression — including poetry and counter-mapping — as forms of solidarity and self-care that resist the narrow evidentiary standards imposed on disaster research.
Claudia Santos discusses Amartya Sen's capability approach, drawing on her PhD research in Guinea-Bissau to argue that deprivation of basic freedoms, not climate hazards alone, shapes who is able to move, stay, or survive a disaster.
Santos argues that justice in disaster scholarship depends on resistance, describing researcher self-reflection, "double agent" institutional work, and small acts like reframing language in official reports as legitimate forms of activism.
The conversation surfaces a recurring tension: institutional funding structures reward quantifiable, depoliticized research, while researchers themselves remain complicit in extractive practices that produce little benefit for the communities they study.
Both guests close by expressing hope grounded in creative and participatory methods, courage in the face of institutional pressure, and collective — rather than individual — responsibility for structural change.

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.
Hosts
Jason von Meding
Ksenia Chmutina
Guests
Aditya Sharan — Lecturer in Risk Management and Development, Auckland University of Technology; scholar of disaster risk reduction, gender, social exclusion, and participatory governance
Jonatan Lassa — Senior Disaster Risk Scientist, Earth Sciences New Zealand; Senior Fellow, Charles Darwin University; interdisciplinary scholar of disaster governance, political will, and postcolonial critique
Key themes
Postcolonial theory and hybridity in disaster studies
Gender beyond the binary in disaster risk reduction
Colonial legacies in state and institutional discourse
Political will, authoritarianism, and the "business" of disaster
Collaborative governance as a tool of democratic decline
Resistance, agency, and small acts of negotiation
Hope amid backlash and institutional inertia
Core discussion highlights
Aditya Sharan discusses Homi Bhabha's concepts of hybridity and mimicry, applying them to her research with India's Hijra community to show how marginalized groups negotiate power and access resources under conditions shaped by colonial-era criminalization.
Sharan argues that Bhabha's framework helps move disaster studies beyond binary understandings of gender and vulnerability, situating it alongside contemporaries like Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, and Chandra Mohanty.
Jonatan Lassa discusses Edward Said, connecting Said's work on discourse and imperialism to his own research on the "path dependency" of disaster policy in Indonesia and Myanmar, and to his activism during the anti-authoritarian movements in West Timor.
Lassa argues that Western paternalism continues to dominate disaster and humanitarian research, and that framing disaster as "everybody's business" can quietly normalize it as a market opportunity for the resilience and climate finance industries.
The conversation critiques "collaborative governance" as a hegemonic discourse used by donors and multilateral institutions to sideline critical civil society actors, linking this shift to democratic decline in Indonesia and elsewhere.
Both guests reflect on resistance as something that can appear as mimicry or small, unnoticed acts rather than only large-scale activism.
The episode closes with a discussion of hope: both guests point to the persistence of critical dialogue and scholarship — despite repeated setbacks — as itself a source of hope for the field.

Episode overviewEpisode 8 continues Season 10’s regional focus by turning to Southeast Asia, with a conversation centered on the Philippines and Vietnam. This episode brings together political sociology, disaster mental health, Buddhism, and grassroots practice to examine disasters as products of political systems, colonial legacies, and relational breakdowns—and to explore what engaged, justice-oriented alternatives might look like.
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 overviewEpisode 7 continues Season 10’s regional focus with an in-depth conversation on Japan. Drawing on political theory, radical history, and long-term engagement with disaster-affected communities, the episode examines how Japanese intellectual traditions—often overlooked in disaster studies—help illuminate power, vulnerability, governance, and the social contracts that underpin disaster risk.
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 overviewEpisode 6 marks a shift in Season 10 from thematic conversations to regional perspectives, focusing on Latin America (and the Caribbean) as rich sites of critical disaster thinking. The episode foregrounds intellectual traditions that challenge Eurocentric assumptions in disaster studies and emphasizes plurality, dialogue, and the politics of knowledge production.
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 overviewEpisode 5 centers Black power and Black scholarship as foundational to understanding disasters, vulnerability, resistance, and justice. Through a wide-ranging conversation grounded in lived experience, political struggle, and long-term community engagement, the episode examines how Black intellectual traditions reshape how disasters are understood, studied, and responded to.
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 overviewEpisode 4 turns to anarchism as a lens for rethinking disasters, governance, and collective action. Through a rich conversation grounded in political theory, history, and pacifism, the episode explores how anarchist ideas—particularly mutual aid, nonviolence, and suspicion of centralized authority—offer critical insights into disaster risk, response, and recovery.
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 overviewEpisode 3 expands Season 10’s exploration of Contemplating Catastrophe with a wide-ranging conversation on urbanism, technology, space, and time. The episode brings together historical, geographical, and critical perspectives to examine how disasters are produced, anticipated, governed, and lived—often long before any so-called “event” occurs.
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 overviewEpisode 2 continues Season 10’s thematic journey with a focused conversation on feminism and disaster studies. The discussion explores how feminist thinking reshapes disaster scholarship and practice, challenges dominant canons, and opens space for listening, care, solidarity, and justice-oriented research.
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.

Episode overviewSeason 10 opens with a live conversation setting the intellectual frame for a new series built around Contemplating Catastrophe, an edited collection of short essays engaging thinkers outside conventional disaster studies. The episode reflects on why reading beyond the field matters, how theory reshapes practice, and why eclectic, critical scholarship is essential for the future of disaster research.
Hosts
Jason von Meding
Ksenia Chmutina
Guests
A.J. Faas — anthropologist and disaster scholar
J.C. Gaillard — geographer and disaster researcher
Key themes
Why disaster studies must continually read beyond itself
Theory as a way to unsettle settled ideas, not as abstraction for its own sake
Eclecticism, curiosity, and “thinking with” rather than “thinking about” communities
The limits of normative frameworks (e.g., vulnerability, “no natural disasters”)
How critical theory informs practice, not just scholarship
The importance of non-Anglophone, non-Western, and untranslated bodies of thought
Creating intellectual space for early-career researchers to take theoretical risks
Core discussion highlights
Introduction to Contemplating Catastrophe, a collection of short essays on thinkers who shape disaster thinking indirectly—philosophers, artists, theorists, and writers outside the field.
A.J. Faas discusses reading across philosophy, literature, anthropology, and history to keep thought “lively,” and reflects on how Gramsci and Santiago Castro-Gómez help disaster scholars rethink power, hegemony, and relationality.
J.C. Gaillard reflects on frustration with disaster practice as a driver for engaging critical theory, particularly Foucault, and argues that theory liberates practice rather than distracting from it.
Shared concern that dominant concepts can silence alternative ontologies and lived realities if left unexamined.
A collective call to broaden disaster scholarship beyond Euro-American traditions and to value thinkers writing in other languages and contexts.
Season 10 structure
Live episodes recorded through 2025, archived on our Youtube channel!
Thematic episodes planned on feminism, urbanism, anarchism, Black power, Latin American and Caribbean thought, East and Southeast Asian intellectual traditions, and Eastern philosophies.