Coping with Disasters, A Course About Resilience, Creativity, and Critical Thinking
A course exploring how people and societies respond to crisis is now underway at the University Centre of the Westfjords. Running from March 2–13, Coping with Disasters introduces students to the foundations of Disaster Risk Management while encouraging them to think deeply about how disasters take shape and what helps individuals and communities recover when hardship strikes.
The course combines academic learning with a wide range of engaging materials and activities. Alongside literature, students work with case studies and group projects and explore the topic through mixed media including podcasts, documentaries, and artwork. There is even a disaster film club, as well as a field trip, offering students a dynamic and varied learning experience.
At the heart of the course is the concept of resilience: the ability of a society to recover and bounce back after a disastrous event. By drawing together perspectives from earth sciences, environmental studies, sociology, health sciences, psychology, and cultural studies, the course gives students a broad and multifaceted understanding of how crises affect people and systems on the individual, community, infrastructural, and institutional levels.
Students are introduced to the central concepts of disaster research and examine how monitoring, early warning, planning, and exercises can help reduce the impact of natural hazards. The course also looks closely at what happens in the aftermath of extreme events, highlighting the importance of psychological first aid, communication, media, art, and spirituality in helping people cope with hardship, tragedy, and trauma.
By the end of the course, students will be able to explain key definitions and processes in disaster management, assess the factors that make populations vulnerable to hazards, and critically discuss the coping mechanisms and conditions that shape societal resilience at different levels. They will also gain practical experience in developing a crisis communication strategy and presenting a disaster response concept designed to support post-disaster communities.
The course instructor is Dr. Uta Reichardt, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Sustainability Studies at the University of Iceland. Her work explores the synergies that emerge in the dialogue between science and the arts, with a particular focus on sustainable development through the lens of disaster risk reduction. She also examines the role of art and design in preparedness, relief, and recovery following disastrous events.
Read more about the course here.
All master's courses taught at the University Centre of the Westfjords are open to participants from both universities and the business community. If you are interested in attending a single course at the University Centre, you can familiarize yourself with our course catalogue and submit an application for a single course.