In today’s episode of Being Human we’ll be looking at the topic of disaster - how do people prepare for disasters, how can we mitigate their effects, and how do we use technologies to equip ourselves in times of trouble? We’ll be looking specifically at Japan, a country which has frequent natural disasters, and which on March 11th 2011 suffered the triple disaster of a tsunami, earthquake, and nuclear meltdown, killing nearly 20,000 people and causing long-term devastation for those affected.

Today's episode is hosted by Laura Haapio-Kirk, and she is joined by:

• Chika Watanabe, who is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester in the UK. Chika is interested in how different advocates of disaster preparedness in Japan and Chile persuade ordinary citizens to be prepared for disasters when we don’t know when they will happen. Chika tweets @drchikawatanabe. 
• Andrew Littlejohn, an environmental anthropologist who is currently Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. The main question motivating his current research is how to live more sustainably in a world damaged not only by disasters but also the technologies we develop to mitigate them.
• Giulia De Togni, a social/legal anthropologist who is currently working as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society at Edinburgh University Medical School. Her doctoral research project focused on the living conditions of the Fukushima evacuees who moved to temporary housing facilities after the triple disaster of March 2011. Guilia tweets @giulia_de_togni.

To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for ‘Being Human’ in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Antónia Gama and Deanna Mitchell, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.

In this week’s episode, host Dr Jennifer Cearns is joined by Dr Erol Saglam (Stockholm University), Dr Silvia Posocco (Birkbeck, University of London), and Daniel Artus (University College London) to talk about what conspiracy theories are and how they operate in different cultural contexts across the world, as well as how anthropologists might approach them.

• Erol Saglam is a social anthropologist. After getting his PhD from Birkbeck, University of London, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Stockholm University in Sweden. His current project explores masculinities, conspiracy theories, and authoritarianisation.
• Silvia Posocco is a social anthropologist based at Birkbeck, University of London. Silvia has conducted ethnographic research on secrecy and insurgent movements in Guatemala, the archives of transnational adoption across times and temporalities, and most recently, on forensic archives, cultures of evidence and bioinformation in the UK. Silvia tweets @silviaposocco.
• Dan Artus is a digital and (increasingly medical) anthropologist doing his PhD at University College London, with support from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Vaccine Confidence Project. His research is on HPV vaccination in Ireland, particularly focusing on information practises and expertise. Dan tweets @DanOfArtus. 

To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for ‘Being Human’ in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Antónia Gama and Deanna Mitchell, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.

In this week’s episode, host Dr Jennifer Cearns is joined by Professor Emma Crewe (SOAS), Bryony Rudkin (University of Birmingham), and Dr Igor Cherstich (University College London) to discuss what democracy is, and how it is constructed and experienced within different cultural contexts across the world. What can anthropology add to our understanding of these political forms and practices, and how might an anthropological approach depart from the more political, economic or even philosophical conversations we might hear more typically through digital and print media?

• Emma Crewe is an anthropologist interested in the relationship between politicians and people in society. She is Director of the Global Research Network on Parliaments and People, giving grants to scholars and artists in Myanmar and Ethiopia to study parliaments. She is also Chair of the RAI’s Committee on the Anthropology of Policy and Practice. She tweets @_Emma_Crewe.
• Bryony Rudkin is studying for a PhD at the University of Birmingham looking at how local politicians behave in meetings. She has been a local councillor herself for the past 23 years in the town of Ipswich where she lives. She tweets @bryony1963.
• Igor Cherstich is an anthropologist who has done extensive research in Libya. Igor has recently joined the Thomas Coram Research Unit at the UCL Social Research Institute, and he has worked on tribalism, revolutionary politics and the relationship between people and the state in Libya.

To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for ‘Being Human’ in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Antónia Gama and Deanna Mitchell, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.