Ayse Yildiz is an Assistant Professor in Risk at the School of Business at the University of Leicester, UK. An expert in climate and disaster risk, resilience and disaster preparedness, she is an affiliate of both the University of Leicester’s Institute for Environmental Futures and the Society of Risk Analysis. Ayse’s research focuses primarily on community-based disaster resilience, risk perception and child-centred disaster risk reduction. She engages with diverse audiences to promote awareness and understanding of disaster-related issues, including government agencies, local teams, schools and students of varied cultural and religious backgrounds. Ayse has convened seminars and workshops alongside representatives of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and regularly contributes expert opinion to post-disaster media coverage.
Rajib Shaw is a professor in the Graduate School of Media and Governance at Keio University, Japan. He is also the senior fellow of the Institute of Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) Japan, and the chairperson of the Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society (SEEDS) Asia and the Church World Service (CWS) Japan, two Japanese NGOs. He is also a co-founder of a Delhi (India)- based social entrepreneur startup, the Resilience Innovation Knowledge Academy (RIKA). Earlier, he was the executive director of the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) and was a professor at Kyoto University. His expertise includes disaster governance, community-based disaster risk management, climate change adaptation, urban risk management, and disaster and environmental education. Professor Shaw was the chair of the United Nations Science Technology Advisory Group (STAG) for disaster risk reduction and currently is the co-chair of the Asia Pacific Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (AP-STAG).