Monika Büscher, professor of Sociology at Lancaster University and the director of the Centre for Mobilities Research, tells us what’s mobile about researching floods and earthquakes.
Imagine a flood, an earthquake, a pandemic. What do people do to stop the water, trace a virus? How do they imagine, plan, respond and recover from crises? How do they use technologies? Our research on disaster mobilities at Cemore is about people’s practices of (im)mobilising in crises. We study how emergency and volunteer agencies, citizens and non citizens (immigrants, refugees, tourists) spread ideas and control rumours, move resources, share and withhold information, evacuate or stay put. We use mobile and inventive methods in collaborations with practitioners, policy-makers and computer scientists, in projects such as BRIDGE and SecInCoRe.
