Research portrait: Maximilian Wanner

• What is your area of expertise?

I am studying progress and change in disaster risk reduction from a political science perspective, both on the global and national level. It is important to me to shift our focus away from the catastrophes and emphasise what we humans can achieve by highlighting processes and mechanisms of change.

• What sparked your interest in Natural Hazards and Disaster Science?

Already during my undergraduate studies, I became interested in climate change processes and in the question why we were not doing more. Back then, I decided to stay on the mitigation side and write my master thesis on leadership in solar energy. After that, I thought I would keep exploring complex governance structures in connection to renewable energy politics and mitigation. However, the CNDS community got me hooked and inspired me to jump over on the adaptation side. In particular, since I felt that mitigation was not moving fast enough, while societies and communities need to adapt to changing circumstances at a higher pace. Seeing and hearing about all the disasters occurring every day in the world, I felt that I wanted and could contribute to enabling a more sustainable future.

• If I could only work on one problem in Natural Hazards and Disaster Science it would be our best practices and how can made further progress towards resilient, sustainable futures, because there is so much knowledge out there that could be documented, analysed and understood to potentially be scaled-up and used in different contexts. For instance, indigenous knowledge may include strategies how me can address climate change adaptation on a larger scale. Ideas from other areas may be translated into action in disaster risk reduction and might help us to get at the root causes of vulnerability of societies such as social inequalities. In the end, if we eradicated vulnerability, we would eliminate the risk for disaster.
  
• What book or paper has been most influential to your career and why?

That would have been the article in Nature Climate Change “Emergence of polycentric climate governance and its future prospects” by Andrew J. Jordan, Dave Huitema, Mikael Hildén, Harro van Asselt, Tim J. Rayner, Jonas J. Schoenefeld, Jale Tosun, Johanna Forster, and Elin L. Boasson. This article was key and inspiration when I wrote up my applications for PhD positions and proposed a research project.

• What do you like to do when you’re not working on research?

I very much enjoy being in nature, regardless whether it is for a hike or skiing, looking at the rough sea or high mountain tops. There is nothing more beautiful than a winter landscape of fragile frozen things untouched and undisturbed. Other than that, I love getting together with friends for boardgames or old-school Pen&Paper roleplaying games à la Dungeons & Dragons

• What is your golden tip for current early career scientists?

Put your imposter syndrome in a corner as you start to build your own area expertise. Be open-minded and do not get lost in your tiny research gap, but try to get a wider understanding of things and try to find people you would like to work with.

RESEARCH PORTRAIT: ELENA MONDINO

Researcher at the Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University

• What is your area of expertise?

I mainly work with the perception of drought and flood risk, investigating how it changes over time, what factors influence it and how it in turn influences people’s behaviour toward the hazard.

• What sparked your interest in natural hazards and disaster science?

Because I always wanted to do something that brings together the social and the natural sciences, disaster science seemed like a natural outlet for me. There is no disaster risk reduction without research in both aspects of it, the natural and the social.

If I could only work on one problem/issue/challenge in natural hazards and disaster science it would be the spread of misinformation at the early stages of a crisis, because it has the power of influencing everything that comes afterwards – from authorities’ decision making to people’s perceptions and behaviours.

• What book or paper has been most influential to your career and why?

I would definitely put “Judgement under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” on the podium, article written in 1974 by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman and published in Science. This paper completely changed the way I look at people’s behaviour and decision making. Absolutely a must-read!

• What do you like to do when you’re not working on research?

Whenever I’m outside the office, I rock climb, run, and practice yoga. I also enjoy gardening, baking, and knitting – I need something to disconnect from work for every type of weather, year-round!

• What is your golden tip for early career scientists?

Even though I’m still an ECR myself, my golden tip is to set boundaries between work and private life immediately. Even though there may be exceptions, and times in which there are many deadlines approaching, for me there is no such thing as emails or work outside working hours or in the weekends. Working longer (or all the time) does definitely not equal working better, quite the opposite