Another important resource for disaster researchers and graduate students considering where to apply:
The Center for Hazards Assessment, Response & Technology (CHART) at the University of New Orleans.
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Some reflections on the PhD dissertation process for folks working at the margins of several disciplines. This version prepared for ISCRAM PhD Colloquium students.
Transdiciplinary & Translational Dissertation Process – Disaster, Information Science, Psychology. (PDF)
I missed last year’s ISCRAM conference, but was able to go briefly this year. Maybe because of the distance, I was again struck by the level of multidisciplinarity at this conference, and the profound struggle to move into a truly transdisciplinary space. I have enough of a computing background to keep up with the gist of most of the presentations, but I am also increasingly aware of just how sophisticated these folks are at mathematics — some of the math I can follow at a conceptual level, and in other not. At the same time, the computer folks (and even the human factors folks) make a lot of assumptions about human behavior, useability, etc. that just fly in the face of what more general psychology suggests. And then there is the issue of actually conducting research in this arena — it is so damn expensive and time consuming, and we haven’t even begun to really solve the tower of babble problem. I am hoping to figure out a way to get at this in a track for next year.