Dr Andrew Collins (Disaster & Development Centre, Northumbria University)
My humanitarian assistance orientation includes through extended voluntary service in wartime Mozambique during the 1980s, and subsequently international engagements with development and disaster reduction initiatives globally. I partly entered academia to explore ideas concerning local and global crises, gaining a PhD from King’s College, London in 1996 on ‘Environment Health and Population Displacement in Mozambique’ which I later rewrote for Ashgate Press (1998). I have published widely on health, disaster and development related topics including ‘Disaster and Development’ (2009) for Routledge Perspectives on Development Series, used by teaching programmes internationally. Beyond traditional peer reviewed papers for journals I have written for various other outlets, such as IFRC World Disasters Report (2009) and other technical or alternative media. My current research interests concern the theoretical, methodological and policy aspects of disaster responses, health ecology, sustainable development, and human security. This engages interlinked issues of environment and society, population displacement, risk, governance, education, and disaster management. I have applied this focally to health, disease and community based risk, early warning and emergency response strategies variously funded by ESRC, DFID and others.
I led the establishment of the first combined disaster management and sustainable development postgraduate programme launched at Northumbria in 2000, and the Disaster and Development Centre (DDC) launched 2004. I currently supervise a community of PhD students and post doc researchers alongside a varied group of DDC Affiliates spanning the disaster and development field. This has been active in more than 20 countries including the UK using people centred disaster reduction research, teaching and learning. It has required addressing hazards, disasters and complex emergencies in an interdisciplinary manner, interacting with multiple practitioner perspectives. I have carried out over 30 consultations and led more than 20 research and development projects in the subject area. I am married with one child aged 18.
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