The Disaster Event and its Afterlives - the Attabad Landslide in Northern Pakistan as Case Study

The Lecture

Disasters are typically known as disruptive events that occur in a specific period of time and result in considerable loss of human life and destruction of built environment and infrastructure. Disasters are thus considered as perturbations in an otherwise stable world. However, moving away from the perturbation and return systems thinking and instead assessing the disaster as an ‘ongoing’ event allows us to explore the afterlives of the disaster event, potentially dismantling the framework employed worldwide for disaster governance. 

The lecture will discuss the Attabad landslide event in Northern Pakistan as a case to explore varied and disparate ways in which the disaster event lives on beyond the formal, State-led or NGO-led frameworks of disaster management, response and recovery. It explores practices of worlding of affected communities in constrained and challenging environments. Specifically, it engages with how ‘life is held together’ by the affected communities in the absence and exhaustion of aid programs and how, through their practices and processes of inhabiting the post-disaster landscape, they continue to shape its making. By venturing into shelter sites, agricultural lands and the IDP* resettlement program, Zahra will discuss how spatial forms such as shelters for the IDP or resettlement houses are re-purposed and adapted by affected communities in hopes of building a relatable future.

*IDP: Internally Displaced Populations

The Speaker

Zahra Hussain is currently a Research Fellow at IIAS. She is the Founder and Director of Laajverd. She holds a PhD in Human Geography from Durham University, UK, and a BArch in  Architecture Design from NCA, Lahore, Pakistan. 

Registration (required)

Everyone is welcome, but we do ask you to register as seating is limited, and we have to order lunch. Please use the web form on this page.