Disasters and Politics

Michael Guggenheim is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, researching how disaster experts conceive of the population. He has also worked with Bernd Kräftner and Judith Kröll of shared inc. on a qualitative laboratory for disaster and emergency provision forecasting, and an exhibition on science and the public. His previous research has focused on the change of use of buildings and how materiality and use interrelate and he studied environmental experts for his PhD. He is the author of Organisierte Umwelt. Umweltdienstleistungsfirmen Zwischen Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft Und Politik (2005) and co-editor of Re-Shaping Cities: How Global Mobility Transforms Architecture and Urban Form (2010).
Israel Rodríguez-Giralt is Lecturer in Social Psychology at the Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona. His research aims to connect the study of social movements with science and technology studies. For his PhD he studied the role that social movements played in politicizing Doñana's Disaster, one of the most serious environmental controversies in the recent history of Spain. His current research focuses on the processes and practices mediating political participation and mobilization in public controversies around social care policies.
Manuel Tironi is Assistant Professor at the Instituto de Sociología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His research focuses on public engagement, disasters, envirotech controversies and large technical systems. He is currently investigating the performative nature of participatory devices in catastrophic settings and the configuration of the GMO controversy in Chile. He is the author, with Fernando Pérez, of SCL: Prácticas, Espacios y Cultura Urbana (2009).