Resilient Material
The role of built structures in post-disaster recovery
Resilient Material: The role of built structures in post-disaster recovery is a three-year research project (2020-2023) funded by Kyushu University’s QR Program [Tsubasa Project no. 02101]. The project is an interdisciplinary inquiry into how the presence of material structures aid community recovery in the aftermath of disasters, and will be investigated by a team of six researchers.
The project will argue that material structures offer a crucial means to repair the rupturing of memory for communities that have experienced disasters. Material structures function as stores of social as well as built capital, and the heritage they provide is crucial to narrating continuity between pre- and post-disaster situations, and thus aiding community revitalization.
The project will undertake a comparative study of a series of memory ruptures in East Asia, associated with war, migration, colonialism, state collapse, and natural disasters, in order to discern and analyse the processes through which material structures become heritage for community recovery.
Upcoming Events
Team
Edward Boyle
Ted is an assistant professor at Kyushu University and the PI of the project. He studies ideas of political space, territory and its borders in Japan, Northeast India, Palau and the wider region.
Yuki Kato
Yuki, an associate professor at Kyushu University, is an architect and cultural heritage researcher who specializes in the history of Japanese shrines.
Julia Gerster
Julia, an assistant professor at Tohoku University, is a Japanologist with a disciplinary focus in social anthropology working on post-disaster recovery following the March 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan’s Tohoku region.
Paul Richardson
Paul, an associate professor at the University of Birmingham, is a political geographer working on national identity, borders, and sovereignty, with a regional focus on Russia and Eurasia.
Shu-Mei Huang
Shumei, an associate professor at National Taiwan University, studies post-colonial urbanism, indigenous heritage, and recovery planning in Taiwan and East Asia.
Edward Vickers
Edward, a professor at Kyushu University, researches the history and politics of education in contemporary East Asian societies (especially China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), as well as the politics of heritage and 'public history' across the region.
