Panel
Risk and uncertainty studies should not just be academically focused but also more crucially practically relevant. One of the goals of the Society for Risk Analysis-Europe is to ensure that the work that academics do at universities are also practically useful. This panel discussion focuses on bridging this gap with our panelists discussing real life practical examples ranging from the present day threats of disinformation and fake news to planning and hazard management and the importance of finding compromises between indigenous people and large scale infrastructure projects.
Chair:
Ragnar E. Löfstedt, Professor of Risk Management
Ragnar E. Löfstedt is the Director of King’s Centre of Risk Management, King’s College London, UK where he teaches and conducts research on risk communication and management. He is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, and he is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Public Sector Research, Gothenburg University, Sweden.
He has conducted research in risk communication and management in such areas as renewable energy policy, food safety issues, pharmaceutical recalls, telecommunications, biosafety, and the siting of building of incinerators, nuclear waste installations and railways.
Dr. Löfstedt is the author/editor of ten books and over 90 peer reviewed articles, is the editor-in-chief for Journal of Risk Research, editor of the Earthscan publications' Risk, Society and Policy book series, and is on the editorial boards of Journal of Health Communication, International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management, and Risk Management.
Participants:
Sudha Sudhir Arlikatti, Associate Professor of Business Continuity Management and Integrated Emergency Management
Dr. Sudha Arlikatti is an architect-planner turned academician with over 17 years of teaching and disaster research experience. She holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Science with an emphasis in Environmental Planning and Hazards Management from Texas A&M University, College Station (USA). After eleven years of teaching in the USA she joined the faculty of resilience at Rabdan Academy, UAE in 2016, in their flagship BSc program in Business Continuity Management and Integrated Emergency Management.
Her research interests include risk communication in multi-ethnic communities, protective action decision-making, organizational resiliency and climate change mitigation and adaptation. She has been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Texas Department of State Health Services and Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity. She is currently serving a four year term as the Vice President of the Research Committee on the Sociology of Disasters RC39 with the International Sociological Association (2015–2018).
Mikael Karlsson, Associate Professor in Environmental Science
Dr. Mikael Karlsson is a senior researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. His work focuses on environmental governance, science-policy interactions and risk management related to climate and energy issues, marine ecosystems and chemical pollution.
Dr. Karlsson serves since long in various expert bodies and agency boards, in Sweden and internationally, among these the Swedish Agenda 2030 delegation, the Swedish Chemicals Agency, and the European Commission’s High Level Group on Energy Intensive Industries. In 2005–2017, he was President of the European Environmental Bureau, Europe’s largest environmental organisation. In 2002–2014, he was President of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.
Dr. Karlsson has been a frequent participant at various EU, OECD, UN and WTO meetings. He is also Partner and Senior Advisor at 2050 Consulting in Stockholm, advising companies and public organisations on sustainability issues. He has been teaching environmental sciences since 1995.
Michael Matz, Senior Adviser at the Nordic Council
Michael Matz has studied Literature, English and Economics at Lund University. He became a Senior Adviser at the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2009 working with the Nordic cultural collaboration for the Nordic Ministers of Culture. Since 2016 he has been employed at the Nordic Council, the inter-parliamentary forum, working with culture, including media, education and research collaboration.
May-Britt Öhman, PhD in History of Technology
May-Britt Öhman is a Lule/Forest Sámi of the Lule River/Julevädno valley and PhD, History of Technology, Royal Institute of Technology, 2007. She founded the Technoscience research group in 2013 and Sámi Land Free University in 2015. She is active at the Centre for Gender Research, and CEMFOR, the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Racism, Uppsala University. Since fall 2017 she is a guest researcher at the Unit of History, Luleå University of Technology.
May-Britt has also been a board member of the National Association of Swedish Saami (SSR) 2011-2015, deputy member of the Sámi Parliament 2013-2017, board member since 2011 of Silbonah Samesijdda, member of the editorial board of NAIS, Native American and Indigenous Studies Journal 2013-2016 and a founding board member of UPPSAM – the association for Sámi related research in Uppsala.
Her research focus is on large scale technical systems, hydropower, energy, water resources, environment, risk and safety, decolonization, indigenous studies and healing from traumas of colonization.