RSC Public Seminar Series, Michaelmas Term
Emergency Shelter and Forced Migration
Series convened by Tom Scott-Smith and Mark E. Breeze
This interdisciplinary seminar series examines the nature and challenges of emergency shelter in the context of forced migration. What are the key issues in the design and provision of shelters? What does better shelter mean and how can we get there? How can political dynamics be managed in the organization of camps and urban areas? What lessons emerge from over forty years practical work in the shelter sector? The speakers in this series include academics and practitioners from the fields of architecture, planning, anthropology, humanitarianism, and design.
The seminar series complements the forthcoming issue of Forced Migration Review on Emergency Shelter, to be published in 2017.
About the speaker
Tom Scott-Smith is Associate Professor of Refugee Studies and Forced Migration, fellow of St. Cross College Oxford, and Course Director for the MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration. He holds an MPhil and DPhil from the University of Oxford, an MSc from the University of London, and an MA from the University of Edinburgh. He was previously Lecturer at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol and Senior Scholar at Lincoln College, Oxford. Before coming to academia, Tom worked as a development practitioner concerned with the education sector in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Tom specializes in the ethnographic and historical study of humanitarian relief and its impact on the lives of refugees. He is currently finishing a five-year project on humanitarian nutrition, whose results will appear in a monograph entitled On an Empty Stomach: the Humanitarian Approach to Hunger. He is also embarking on a new project concerning disaster shelter, with particular attention on encampment and refugee housing. His work has appeared in a number of peer-reviewed scholarly journals including Third World Quarterly, the Journal of Refugee Studies, Refugee Survey Quarterly and Disasters.