Eleonor Marcussen delivered a lecture on ‘Disaster Relief and its Politics’. It was chaired by Awadhendra Sharan.
Responses to disasters often reveal a crisis of governance beyond the event and its aftermath. Relief work and aid fill important functions to challenge or assert political power in place. The aftermath of the 1934 Bihar-Nepal earthquake opens a window to analyse national and colonial aid as political tools of governance to negotiate relationships and institutions. In this lecture, Eleonor Marcussen will draw from her recent book Acts of Aid to analyse the political impact of disaster relief in the 1930s.
Eleonor Marcussen is a Researcher in History at Linnaeus University (Sweden) and member of its Center for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. Her research explores environmental history, infrastructure and historical disaster research. She is the author of Acts of Aid: Politics of Relief and Reconstruction in the 1934 Bihar-Nepal Earthquake (CUP, 2022).
Awadhendra Sharan is Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
Tuesday, 7 February 2023, 4 pm, Seminar Room and Zoom http://bit.ly/3HNi90a