When, Where, and Who?

The Disaster Haggyo is sponsored by the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, South Korea. The disaster haggyo is a collaboration of the Center for Anthropocene Studies, the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy and the SSRC. The instruction will take place on KAIST campus, with a multi-day field site trip to Jeju Island and a day trip to Ansan, South Korea.

August 14-22 in Daejeon, Ansan, and Jeju Island, South Korea

*Online Disaster Haggyo available September 20-22

*Online Disaster Haggyo: This option is provided for participants who would like to participate and are not able to travel to South Korea. Lecture materials, live sessions, and interactive dialogue will be made available for several hours on each of the three days. Contact Scott Knowles for details (sgknowles@kaist.ac.kr)

The Disaster Haggyo is led by an instructional team including Scott Gabriel Knowles, Kim Fortun, Buhm Soon Park, Jacob Remes, and many others to be announced soon including artists and journalists in residence.

Additional instruction will be provided by graduate students of the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy (KAIST).

Applicants may include: advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty from any discipline--science, engineering, medicine/health, social sciences all encouraged!  Journalists, artists, and activists are also highly encouraged to apply.  We strive to achieve a highly diverse student cohort, and students from anywhere in the world are eligible.

What is the Disaster Haggyo?

The wide variety and impact of disasters globally demands new approaches to research, collaboration, and disaster justice. The Disaster Haggyo is a disaster studies school aimed at accelerating the implementation of cutting-edge disaster research for maximum benefit to communities.  The Disaster Haggyo will draw social scientists, engineers, and scientists together for collaborative research.  The Disaster Haggyo will facilitate deep learning in the ways that disaster history shapes the present vulnerabilities and strengths of a community.  Disaster-impacted communities need a greater voice in disaster research and policy formation if there is to be measurable progress against the slow disasters of industrial pollution, climate change, and the threat of new disease outbreaks. The Disaster Haggyo facilitates three activities simultaneously: 1) new interdisciplinary disaster research in areas of greatest national need; 2) a new pedagogical model for increasing skill among disaster researchers, skill necessary for technology and policy innovation; 3) development of community-based action for developing safer, disaster-resistant communities.

Preliminary Schedule

Before August 13 Online curriculum available: featuring archival materials, research articles, guided research tutorials, interviews with research leaders, +2 zoom meetings to get acquainted and share interests before coming to Korea.

Session Schedule

Disaster Haggyo Program English

What will we do?

The implementation of disaster research is a signal challenge for the next generation of researchers, especially in the context of disasters moving at different temporal scales—from urgent events like typhoons and disease outbreaks, to slow disasters like climate change.  Of special value is interdisciplinary disaster research combining technical and social elements, in order to develop wise strategies for disaster risk reduction. The Disaster Haggyo draws deeply on traditions of the field station in the natural sciences.  By establishing key sites for situated research, students of the Disaster Haggyo will be able to participate in ongoing research efforts. The methodology for site-specific disaster research draws on history as a guide for disaster prevention needs.  The sites for this new interdisciplinary disaster research are: 1) Jeju Island, 2) Ansan. In each site the Disaster Haggyo will work closely with local practitioners in emergency management, environmental history, and disaster victim support.  For example, in Jeju the Disaster Haggyo wil focus on the longstanding problems associated with the 4.3 Uprising.  This disaster is ongoing—with active reclamation of human remains still underway, education efforts proceeding, and the continuing development of a memorialization process.  How does the history of violence in Jeju connect with contemporary debates over environmental disasters on the island? This question might, at first, seem far-fetched, until one looks more deeply into current debates over the need for local autonomy, and deep memory in the context of urban planning.  Similarly, in Ansan, the Disaster Haggyo will work closely with the Sewol Ferry family advocates and related organizations.   Here, we situate the Disaster Haggyo in the process of the development of the 4.16 Life Safety Park—a memorialization effort that is once again an urban planning process, intertwined with the effort to provide ongoing, scientific analysis of the Sewol Ferry disaster. 

The Disaster Haggyo is rooted in an approach elaborated by the Haus de Kulturen der Welt (HKW): the Anthropocene Curriculum. Online preparations allow participants to immerse themselves in the research connected to the aforementioned field sites.  Following this period of online training, participants can meet in person fully prepared for high impact, on site research.  At the core is a new pedagogy relevant to entwining disaster history with new technological development.  Participants will be trained in ethnography, historical archival research, and disaster research ethics; and will also be introduced to disaster AI technology, remote sensing, and GIS.  No participant will become expert outside of their field in just a few weeks, however, it IS possible to attain entry-level fluency in discipline-specific concepts that will set the stage for further collaboration across disciplinary boundaries.

Community-based action is an essential element.  The instructors are founding members of the group Disaster Researchers for Justice.  A justice model is required in order to make sure that disaster research is done with communities not on communities.  This reorientation is profound, and infuses every aspect of the Disaster Haggyo design. Students will interact with members of the 4.3 memorial community and victim family members in Ansan—their experiences are highly specific to different disasters: war, industry, technological failure, climate change.  From each, the Disaster Haggyo draws its spirit of inquiry, that is to say this is a research and teaching effort done in the service of justice for disaster victims, and with communities who are the best deciders of what they need to prepare their communities for the disasters of the future.   Drawing on history, connected to cutting-edge technology, these community members become empowered to participate in research that they need.  Such a participatory research model also forms the basis for policy advocacy with a strong base of local support.  In this way, the Disaster Haggyo serves as a crucial connection point for expert researchers and members of the public, a connection point essential for the development of science and technology in a democracy.  As with the research and pedagogical models described above, visitors from around the world attending the Disaster Haggyo have a great deal to learn from disaster-affected communities in South Korea—and the lessons they learn here will connect with their own communities of practice in North America, Europe, and the rest of the world.

Big Questions

Big-Questions-Disaster-Haggyo-1

Who are we?

https://stp.kaist.ac.kr/research_groups/view/id/14

Our team shares various research interests under the big theme of disaster, which builds slowly, and often is relevant to structural violences and inequalities. Several subtopics include smart cities and urban infrastructure, power dynamics around nuclear power plant decomissioning, relationship with non-human in the Anthropocene, memorialization as a process of healing and recovery, material politics of wastes. We are open to multiple research methodologies including historical archival work, ethnographic work (field exploration and interview), art work. Our members love gardening, growing various plants on campus. We have warmhearted team spirit!

You can see our team in more detail at this link

Outcomes

The Disaster Haggyo generates a number of products including art, activism, and scholarship. Participants will be invited to contribute to ongoing research and actions connected with field sites. Participants will also be invited to contribute to special peer reviewed Disaster Haggyo journal articles, and may be asked to build on research initiated at the Disaster Haggyo with support from KAIST.

Cost

Accepted applicants will pay their own airfares; all other costs will be covered, including lodging, local travel, programming, and educational materials. Travel subsidies are available for eligible applicants, with preference to students, independent scholars, and applicants with financial need.