APG5575 Inside disasters: Living through response and recovery

This advanced unit examines disasters through the lens of lived experience in both Global North and Global South contexts, with particular emphasis on the intensifying impacts of climate change. Through international case studies, you will analyse how climate‑driven hazards intersect with social inequality, governance arrangements, economic conditions, identity and other factors that shape disaster experiences and outcomes. The unit centres on how people navigate disasters across different phases of disaster risk management—particularly response and recovery—within an era of increasing climate volatility.

You will examine how individuals and communities move through a range of disaster management institutions, spaces and processes, including evacuation systems, emergency shelters, insurance and compensation schemes, disaster relief programs, community recovery initiatives and local planning processes aimed at reducing disaster risk. You will also engage with diverse knowledge systems, including Indigenous perspectives, to highlight alternative understandings of risk, resilience and environmental stewardship, and to consider how these perspectives can inform more effective and context‑sensitive disaster responses in which diverse actors exercise agency and participate meaningfully.

You will develop practical skills used in disaster response and recovery, including community engagement, trauma‑informed practice and participatory methods. By foregrounding lived experience and climate realities, the unit enables you to critically examine how disaster risk management operates on the ground, and why policies and interventions succeed or fail in different contexts. You will be equipped to design and justify initiatives and programs that are human‑centred, climate‑responsive and attentive to diverse knowledge systems and local contexts.