New MRF Chair-Holders Appointed
Prof. Michelle Leighton, Dr. Mohamed Hamza and Prof. Susan L. Cutter were chosen as the new cohort of Chairs on Social Vulnerability for 2009-2012.
With the approval of the Rector of the United Nations University, Prof. Dr. Konrad Osterwalder, the Munich Re Foundation (MRF) and the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) are delighted to announce the appointment of the new rotating chair-holders for the Chair Project on Social Vulnerability within the project period of 2009-2012.
Prof. Michelle Leighton is the Director of Human Rights Programs, Centre for Law and Global Justice, at the University of San Francisco School of Law. Being a specialist in international human rights law and environmental issues, she counsels non-profit organisations, government and intergovernmental agencies. Prof. Leighton teaches courses on international human rights, environment, trade and corporate accountability. She received her LL.M degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science, a J.D. from Golden Gate University Law School, and a B.A. from the University of California at Davis.
Dr. Mohamed Hamza is an independent consultant with over 20 years of experience in working for international aid agencies and teaching and research in academic institutions. He is a Senior Research Fellow of the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) specialising in vulnerability studies. Dr. Hamza is a visiting Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Emergency and Development Practice, Oxford Brookes University, the Resilience Centre, Cranfield University and Lund University, Sweden. His key areas of expertise and research are disaster risk and vulnerability reduction, post-disaster reconstruction and recovery, shelter in disasters, climate change impact and adaptation, environment and migration, urbanisation and urban risk, capacity development, training and facilitation, project management, action planning and consensus building.
Prof. Susan L. Cutter is a Carolina Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina and the Director of the University’s Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute. She received her B.A. from California State University, Hayward and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1976. Her primary research interests are in the area of vulnerability science, where she focuses on what makes people and the places they live in vulnerable to extreme events and how this vulnerability is measured, monitored, and assessed. Prof. Cutter has authored or edited twelve books and more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.
The new cohort of chair-holders will start to design the Chair Project on social vulnerability in close collegial cooperation and team work with their predecessors and the UNU-EHS staff in 2009. Their future collaboration shall create an even more extended research network and utilise synergies during and beyond the annual summer academies.
The Chair project has stood for outstanding quality of capacity building and other academic deliverables since its establishment in 2005. Due to its success, the project has been extended from 2009 to 2012.
