IRDR appoints new Professor and Lecturer

David Alexander has been appointed Professor of Risk and Disaster Reduction at the UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction.

He will join the IRDR on 1st October. David Alexander teaches emergency planning and management and has research interests in this field, as well as earthquake disaster analysis. His books include "Natural Disasters", "Confronting Catastrophe" and "Principles of Emergency Planning and Management". He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, Co-Editor of Disasters journal, and is a Founding Fellow of the Institute of Civil Protection and Emergency Management. We believe that he will be a great asset to the IRDR and look forward to his arrival in October.

Joanna Faure Walker has been appointed Lecturer in Risk and Disaster Reduction at the UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction. She joined the IRDR on 14th May. After completing a PhD on "Mechanics of continental extension from Quaternary strain fields in the Italian Apennines" in 2009, Joanna worked for RMS for 2 years, where she became familiar with catastrophe models and how academic research is used by the insurance industry. As she returns to academia, she is keen to teach on the IRDR post-graduate programs, integrating her knowledge gained from the city and her research interests in seismic hazard and continental extension.

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