# CMES Disaster Studies Initiative Spring 2026 Colloquium **Date:** April 10, 2026, 1:00 PM -- 7:00 PM EDT **Location:** History Dept Conference Room, Robinson Hall 125, Harvard Yard, Cambridge **Contact:** jhowell@fas.harvard.edu **Event page:** [cmes.fas.harvard.edu/event/cmes-disaster-studies-initiative-spring-2026-colloquium](https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/event/cmes-disaster-studies-initiative-spring-2026-colloquium) --- ## About the Event The [Disaster Studies Initiative](https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/disaster-studies) was founded by Cemal Kafadar in response to a series of highly destructive earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria in February, 2023. The initiative takes a multidisciplinary approach to disaster, bearing in mind the social, political, and environmental factors that bind human activity and geological processes together. The Spring 2026 Colloquium addresses challenges and approaches to the study of disasters in the MENA region, focusing on visualization, writing, research, and history. --- ## Schedule ### 1:00 -- 2:30 PM: Visualizing Disaster - **Evangeline McGlynn** (convener) - **Stephen Guerin** - **Edanur Kuntman** ### 2:40 -- 4:10 PM: Researching and Writing (the) Disaster - **Elif Irem Az** (convener) - **Peter Habib** - **Richardine Mamam Nbiba** ### 4:30 -- 6:00 PM: The History of Seismicity - **Cemal Kafadar** and **Eda Ozel** (conveners) - **Judith Hubbard** - **Ana Luiza Nicolae** - **Aaron Shakow** --- ## Presenter Biosketches ### Evangeline McGlynn **Disaster Studies Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University** [CMES profile](https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/people/eve-mcglynn) | [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/evangelinemcglynn/) Evangeline McGlynn is a geographer who studies the long-term impacts of disaster on urban space. She also writes on spatial imaginaries through the lens of STS and digital geographies. McGlynn holds a PhD in geography from the University of California Berkeley, with a secondary concentration in science and technology studies, and an MDes from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The subject of her dissertation work was the legacy of the 1988 Spitak earthquake in Armenia. She is currently starting a project related to the Kahramanmaras earthquake sequence. In addition to scholarly pursuits, McGlynn has worked for more than a decade as a professional cartographer and GIS specialist, often operating in the humanitarian sphere in post-disaster and conflict settings. --- ### Stephen Guerin **Visualization Research and Teaching Lab, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Graduate School of Design (Landscape Architecture), Harvard University; Founder and CEO, Simtable; President, RedfishGroup** stephenguerin@fas.harvard.edu [GSD: Climate Visualization Techniques](https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/2025/02/landscape-architecture-students-explore-pioneering-climate-visualization-techniques-to-inform-design/) | [Simtable](https://www.simtable.com/about/) | [RedfishGroup](https://www.redfish.com/stephen.htm) | [Santa Fe Institute bio](https://wiki.santafe.edu/index.php/Stephen_Guerin) | [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-guerin-a893/) Stephen Guerin is a primary researcher in the Visualization Research and Teaching Lab at Harvard, with appointments in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and the Graduate School of Design's Landscape Architecture program. He has directed over fifty projects in complex adaptive systems for national and international clients. He founded the Santa Fe Complex, a community R&D project lab, and is President of RedfishGroup, an R&D consultancy based in Santa Fe, New Mexico applying the science of complex adaptive systems. His work centers on visualization, modeling, and the design of self-organizing systems. From 2000 to 2002 he worked as a Senior Software Developer at BiosGroup and participated as a member of Stuart Kauffman's research group. He is a plenary speaker at simulation and visualization conferences and a faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute Complex Systems Summer School. Simtable, his company, is a world leader in agent-based modeling, data visualization, and human-computer interaction, combining GIS data with next-generation computational modeling and ambient computing using active surface projections on physical sand tables. --- ### Edanur Kuntman **Visual Designer, Storyteller, and Game Creator** [Portfolio](https://edanurkuntman.myportfolio.com/) | [Behance](https://www.behance.net/edanurkuntman) | [Europe Comics](https://www.europecomics.com/author/edanur-kuntman/) Edanur Kuntman is a visual designer, storyteller, and game creator originally from Istanbul, Turkey, now based in New York City. She studied at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and holds a degree in political science. Her work spans animation, illustration, game design, and publishing. She creates visual narratives through sequential art and mixed media, exploring themes of grief, memory, and human connection. Her 48-page graphic novel, *The Big Bang*, addresses grief through space metaphors and allegories. --- ### Elif Irem Az **Disaster Studies Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University** [CMES profile](https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/people/irem-az) | [Columbia Anthropology](https://anthropology.columbia.edu/content/elif-irem-az) | [Academia.edu](https://harvard.academia.edu/ElifIremAz) Elif Irem Az is a medical and political-economic anthropologist, poet, and Disaster Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. She received her PhD in sociocultural anthropology from Columbia University in 2023. Seeking to present a corporeal history of contemporary capitalism, Az's research lies at the intersection of disability/debility, medical disability assessment, labor, resource extraction, and temporality in mining and disaster contexts. Based on 18 months of ethnographic research in the Soma Coal Basin of Turkey, Az's in-progress book manuscript, "Life and Limb: Disability, Labor, and Extraction in Soma," explores the corporeal, medical, and political-economic afterlives of the Soma mine disaster of May 2014, which resulted in the deaths of 301 coal miners. At CMES, Az is also working on an oral history and ethnographic project on the February 6 twin earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria. Since February 2024, she has been conducting fieldwork and oral history interviews in the Antakya/Antioch province of the Levant, primarily with survivors who are disabled and/or diagnosed with chronic illnesses as a result of the 2023 earthquakes. --- ### Peter S. Habib **Hicham Alaoui Postdoctoral Fellow, Weatherhead Scholars Program, Harvard University** [Weatherhead profile](https://scholarsprogram.wcfia.harvard.edu/people/peter-habib) | [Emory Anthropology](https://anthropology.emory.edu/people/grad_bios/habib-peter.html) Peter Habib holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Emory University. His work investigates how complex and ruinous environmental realities become appropriated into politicized narratives, often serving nationalist purposes. His current book project, *Fluid Subjects: Displacement, Governance, and the Social Life of Water in Lebanon*, investigates the entanglement of refugee life and water politics in contemporary Lebanon. Research interests include environment, water, humanitarianism, infrastructure, migration, nationalism, political belonging, critical development studies, religion and Christianity, and the modern Middle East and North Africa. He was awarded the Middle East Studies Association 2024 Graduate Student Paper Prize for his paper "Contaminating Humanitarianism: Cholera, Nationalism, and the (Un)Regulated Life of Syrians in Lebanon." --- ### Richardine Mamam Nbiba **Harvard College, Class of 2027** [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardinenbiba) Richardine Nbiba is a Harvard undergraduate (Class of '27) and member of the Harvard Advocate's Poetry Board. She participates in literary and creative writing at Harvard. --- ### Cemal Kafadar **Vehbi Koc Professor of Turkish Studies, Department of History, Harvard University** [CMES profile](https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/people/cemal-kafadar) | [History Dept](https://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/cemal-kafadar) | [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cemal_Kafadar) Cemal Kafadar is the Vehbi Koc Professor of Turkish Studies in the Department of History at Harvard University and founder of the Disaster Studies Initiative at CMES. He began teaching at Harvard as Professor of History in 1993 and was named Harvard's first Vehbi Koc Professor of Turkish Studies in 1997. Professor Kafadar is interested in the social and cultural history of the Middle East and southeastern Europe in the late medieval/early modern era. He teaches courses on Ottoman history, urban space, popular culture, and history and cinema. Among his publications are *Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State* (1995), "How Dark is the History of the Night, How Black the Story of Coffee, How Bitter the Tale of Love: the Changing Measure of Leisure and Pleasure in Early Modern Istanbul," "Evliya Celebi in Dalmatia: an Ottoman Traveler's Encounters with the Arts of the Franks," and *Kendine Ait Bir Roma* (Metis, 2017). --- ### Eda Ozel **Postdoctoral Researcher, Istanbul** [CMES Disaster Studies](https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/disaster-studies) Eda Ozel is a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the Disaster Studies Initiative at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Her work focuses on historical seismicity in the Middle East region, contributing to the initiative's long-term project on the history of earthquakes in the MENA region. She participated in the March 2025 "Disasters in and of the Middle East: Event, Place, Intensity" conference at CMES. --- ### Judith Hubbard **Earthquake Scientist; Visiting Assistant Professor, Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University** [Personal site](https://sites.google.com/site/judithahubbard/) | [Earthquake Insights (Substack)](https://earthquakeinsights.substack.com/) | [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8PJ15XQAAAAJ&hl=en) | [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-judith-hubbard-ab821822a/) Dr. Judith Hubbard is an earthquake scientist and structural geologist who studies long-term tectonics, short-term processes, and everything in between. She earned a BS from Caltech (2005) and a PhD from Harvard University (2011). She was previously a professor at the Earth Observatory of Singapore and Asian School of the Environment at Nanyang Technological University. Her work focuses primarily on South and Southeast Asia, a region with high population density and significant exposure to Earth hazards, with research conducted in Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Myanmar. She co-founded Earthquake Insights, a popular Substack with subscribers from over 130 countries, with collaborator Kyle Bradley. She is regularly consulted by the New York Times, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, and National Geographic. She is a member of the National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council (NEPEC) and has authored books about earthquakes for children. --- ### Ana Luiza Nicolae **PhD Candidate, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University** [Harvard History of Science profile](https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/ana-luiza-nicolae) | [Spotify (Humans of Harvard)](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6yi6It1C7YKS3ux7tlNH3s) Ana Luiza Nicolae is a PhD candidate in history of science at Harvard, working on a longue duree study of the theory and practical manipulations of subterranean waters. Her project connects case studies in the mining, oil, and gas industries from the 16th to the 20th centuries with an attention to the intellectual, artisanal, and labor backgrounds of underground technological experimentation. Her interests lie in tracing the evolution of geological concepts pertaining to the structure of the earth and the mechanisms that lead to its transformation, such as earthquakes, subsidence, and extraction. She studies concepts such as porosity and seismicity, key to understanding how humans have theorized the interaction between fluids and the underground over time. Her interests in ancient science include ancient mathematics and meteorology in Mesopotamia and Greece, with a focus on winds and geometry, and theories on the origins of earthquakes. She is pursuing a concurrent Masters in Geology. As a Pforzheimer Research Fellow (summer 2024), she reconstructed the archive of Harvard's Institute of Geographical Exploration (1930-1951). She holds a BA in Geography and Identity from Harvard College and an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge. --- ### Aaron Shakow **Lecturer, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School** [Harvard Medical School profile](https://ghsm.hms.harvard.edu/faculty-staff/aaron-david-abraham-shakow) | [Harvard Catalyst](https://connects.catalyst.harvard.edu/Profiles/profile/1231982/494) | [Mahindra Humanities Center](https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/people/aaron-shakow) Dr. Aaron Shakow is a lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. From 2017-2021, he was director of the Initiative on Healing and Humanity at the Harvard-Dubai Center for Global Health Delivery, an interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars in the social sciences and humanities and frontline health care delivery institutions. A longtime member of Partners In Health, Dr. Shakow played a key role in the group's work on tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, serving as a policy adviser at the World Health Organization during the "3 x 5" campaign to expand global access to antiretroviral therapy. He recently co-edited "Privilege and Impunity: The Struggle for Accountability in Global Health" (Duke University Press). A current book project, with Dr. Salmaan Keshavjee, is titled "Bait and Switch: Democracy Versus Global Health." He has taught history at Harvard, MIT, and Brandeis, and edited the journal *Health and Human Rights*. He received his PhD from Harvard University.