Dr Stefan Leeffers delivers a taster lecture exploring how impact evaluations guide funding decisions and improve the effectiveness of humanitarian action.
With shrinking budgets and growing crises, humanitarian actors must do more with less. This lecture introduces the tools we use to evaluate what works, what doesn’t, and what’s worth investing in.
Dr Stefan Leeffers is a Lecturer in Disaster and Crisis Risk Finance at the UCL Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction (RDR). As a development economist, his research focuses on disaster risk management and governance in low- and middle-income countries. He specialises in designing and conducting impact evaluations to identify innovative strategies that reduce disaster impacts and build resilience.
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8/1/2025
Christina Bennett, CEO of Start Network, delivers the keynote “The Future of Aid” at the 15th UCL Risk and Disaster Reduction annual conference. In this talk she:
• Diagnoses the strained humanitarian system: political pressures, funding cuts, eroding impartiality
• Highlights that 323 million people now need aid amid shrinking donor budgets
• Introduces the Start Fund’s anticipatory action model for 145 members
• Explores AI’s promise and pitfalls in crisis response
• Calls for a “factory-settings” reset: redistributing power, diversifying finance, and centring people over institutions
• Invites academia to fuel evidence-based reform and local expertise.
Watch the full address and join us in putting people back at the heart of humanitarian action.
Learn more about the conference ➔ https://www.ucl.ac.uk/risk-disaster-reduction/events/2025/jul/15th-rdr-annual-conference-where-human-humanitarianism
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8/1/2025
Join Dr Dan Haines for a taster lecture exploring how history can help us understand disaster risk, and how to reduce it.
Disasters affect people partly because history has made them vulnerable. In this taster lecture, Dan will explain how historical research help us understand the root causes of vulnerability, and prompts us to think about values in the way we respond to disasters and humanitarian crises.
Dr Dan Haines is an environmental historian, focusing on hazards and environmental politics in twentieth century India, Pakistan and the South Asia region. He writes and speaks about environmental and South Asian affairs via policy forums, television, radio and blogs. His research is interdisciplinary and often collaborative.
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8/1/2025
Join Dr Myles Harris for a taster lecture exploring if it might be better to reduce the risks of working in the field for those in the humanitarian and disaster sectors rather than waiting and reacting.
Careers in the humanitarian and disaster sectors may involve deployment to respond to crises. The risks associated with working in the field are significant. Lots of pre-deployment training involves learning about what to do when things go wrong. But, why wait and then react? Is it not better to reduce the risks beforehand?
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8/1/2025
Have you ever wondered how 'natural' disasters really are? Programme leader Dr Dan Haines explains how studying on the Risk, Disaster and Resilience MSc at the UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR) will help you rethink your understanding of disasters and risk.
Find out more about this MSc: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/risk-disaster-reduction/study/masters-programmes/risk-disaster-and-resilience-msc
Find out more a bout the IRDR: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/risk-disaster-reduction/
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3/7/2024
‘After an interval that can only be measured in terms of eternity, we found ourselves back in the more familiar dimensions of space and time’ - Jean Kingdon-Ward ('My Hill so Strong', London, 1952)
In August 1950, Jean and her husband, botanist Francis Kingdon-Ward, experienced an earthquake whilst visiting the Lohit Valley on the India–Tibet borderlands. Using their recollections of the event as a case study, Dr Dan Haines, Lecturer in Disaster and Crisis Response and Programme Leader for the UCL Risk, Disaster and Resilience MSc, explores how time is perceived by people who experience earthquakes and how this impacts future response to emergencies.
The themes he discusses in this video are based on his article 'Timescapes, subjectivity and emotions after the India–Tibet earthquake, 1950', available here: https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtad025
Find out more about the UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR) on our website.
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3/4/2024
Associate Professor at the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction, Dr Joanna Faure Walker, discusses the postgraduate taught programmes available with the department and answers questions on the admissions process.
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2/17/2022
Risk and Disaster Reduction Science lecturer, Dr Bayes Ahmed discusses the BSc GLobal Humanitarian Studies programme available at the UCL Institute for Risk & Disaster Reduction.
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11/9/2021