SHEAR - Programme & Speakers

Olivia Taylor

PhD candidate, Geography, University of Sussex

Olivia’s research considers Disaster Risk Finance (DRF) – a range of policy mechanisms that enable disaster response agencies to finance, plan and trigger earlier responses to disasters.

Olivia Taylor

James Muthoka

PhD researcher, Department of Physical Geography, University of Sussex

James’ research broadly looks at rangeland ecology, with a particular focus on the palatability and drivers of savannah grassland dynamics. James employs Earth Observation techniques to characterize and understand these spatiotemporal dynamics of savannah grasslands at multiple scales.

James Muthoka

Dorothy Heinrich

Technical Advisor, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate

Dorothy focuses on climate-related hazards and the reduction of their humanitarian impacts through anticipation and preparedness. She joined the Climate Centre in 2019 through her MSc at the University of Oxford, and now supports National Societies and their partners on FbF worldwide.

Dorothy Heinrich

Sayanti Sengupta

Technical Advisor, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate

Sayanti is a Social Protection expert providing technical support to the Climate Centre’s work on integrating climate risks into social protection in South Asia and Africa. She has previously worked in water and sanitation and climate adaptation in India, and brings valuable expertise on project implementation and governance.

Sayanti Sengupta

Bettina Koelle

Senior Learning Specialist, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre

Bettina is a geographer by training and passionate about exploring linkages within complex systems and helping people navigate challenges through learning and dialogue. She is a specialist in developing experiential learning activities and a master facilitator for complex and interactive processes of dialogue.

Bettina Koelle

Fleur Monasso

Manager, Capacity Strengthening and Partnerships, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate

Fleur Monasso is one of the managers of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. Fleur joined the Centre in 2005 and is responsible for
resilience programming, climate action empowerment and partnerships. Since 2021, she has mostly focused on the European region. She began to specialize in the international public sector while studying international relations at the University of Amsterdam.

Fleur Monasso

Maarten Van Aalst

Director, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate

Maarten van Aalst is the director of RCCC and oversees RCCC’s support for climate risk management across the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, and its links with scientific and policy communities on climate change, disaster risk management and development planning. He is a professor at the University of Twente, Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observations.

Maarten Van Aalst

Dr. Liz Stephens

Associate Professor in Climate Risks and Resilience Department of Meteorology, University of Reading & Joint Science Lead for Anticipatory Action Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre

Liz Stephens is joint lead for science on anticipatory action at the Red Cross Red Crescent climate Centre and is an Associate Professor of Climate Risks and Resilience at the UK University of Reading. She holds a PhD in hydrology from the University of Bristol.

Dr. Liz Stephens

Irene Amuron

Manager, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate

Irene is a Manager at the RCCC and leads on anticipatory action and is the focal person for learning, innovation and exchange at the Anticipation Hub. She is a technical expert in the field of disaster risk management, whose expertise includes specialist support to National Societies and partners on FbF.

Irene Amuron

Catalina Jaime

Manager, Climate and Conflict, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre

Catalina manages work on climate and conflict and leads on anticipatory action in situations of conflict for the Anticipation Hub. Over the past few years she has coordinated the global development of anticipatory action, and is currently doing her PhD at the University of Twente.

Catalina Jaime

Sumit Dugar

Disaster Resilience Adviser, British Embassy Kathmandu (Nepal). Sumit is leading the £46 million Strengthening Disaster Resilience and Responding to Humanitarian Emergencies in Nepal portfolio and working closely with the Government of Nepal, UN Agencies, Red Cross, International NGOs to build capacity to respond to natural hazards. Interested in the political economy of how scientific research can be used to inform policy and practice and influence resilience programming.

Sumit Dugar

Emma Bee

Emma works for the British Geological Survey and has over twenty years’ experience working as a geospatial data analysis. Her particular interests concern how spatial data is used to better understand natural geological hazards and the impact of such hazards on society. Emma is co-PI of the SHEAR funded LANDSLIP project which focusses on the integration of landscape, meteorological and social dynamics to develop a prototype regional Landslide Early Warning System in India. She is also a Co-I of a UKRI-GCRF project ‘Understanding Risks & Building Enhanced Capabilities in Latin American cities’.

Emma Bee

Pablo Suarez

Pablo first got involved with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre as a technical adviser in 2005. He now directs our initiatives linking applied knowledge with humanitarian work, as well as new approaches to climate risk management. Examples include participatory games for learning and dialogue, and forecast-based financing pilots in Togo and Uganda.

Pablo Suarez

Regie Gibson

Regie Gibson is an award-winning Literary performer and has lectured & performed widely in the U.S., Cuba & Europe. Representing the U.S., Regie competed for and received the Absolute Poetry Award in Monfalcone, Italy. He is a Brother Thomas Fellow, teaches at Clark University, and has served as a consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts. Regie has composed literary texts for The Boston City Singers and the Handel & Haydn Society. He is the creator of The Shakespeare Time-Traveling Speakeasy— a theatrical, literary-concert focusing on the life of William Shakespeare.

Regie Gibson

Steven Cole

Group Leader, Hydrological Forecasting, UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH)

Steven heads the Hydrological Forecasting Group at UKCEH and leads the SHEAR Project NFLICS (Nowcasting FLood Impacts of Convective storms in the Sahel). NFLICS is working with the Senegal National Meteorological Service (ANACIM) to co-develop and trial new automated nowcasts of convective activity and flood risk out to 6-hours.

Steven Cole

Kara Siahaan

Head of the Anticipation Hub, German Red Cross

Kara Siahaan is the Head of the Anticipation Hub, a knowledge and exchange platform to support scientists, practitioners, and policymakers in scaling up anticipatory action worldwide. She has over 15 years of experience in technical assistance, program management, advocacy, and partnership for governments, development agencies, the United Nations, and the Red Cross Red Crescent network in the areas of disaster response, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation.

Kara Siahaan

Lydia Cumiskey

Partnership and Community Engagement Advisor, Anticipation Hub

Lydia manages the Anticipation Hub’s global partnership with over 85 partners across science, policy and practice. She has 8 years’ research and consulting experience working on anticipatory action, disaster risk reduction and early warning systems.

Lydia Cumiskey

Sarah Brown

Practical Action Consulting UK

Sarah Brown is the Thematic Lead for Disaster Risk Reduction for Practical Action Consulting UK. Sarah co-leads the Knowledge Broker for the SHEAR programme and is a Co-Investigator for the SHEAR Landslip project on landslide early warning in India. Sarah’s work includes a focus on Early Warning Systems, on equality and inclusion, and work on a Missing Voices approach to ensuring no-one is left behind in DRR.

Sarah Brown

Wouter Buytaert

Imperial College London

Wouter Buytaert is a Professor in Hydrology and Water Resources at Imperial College London. His research focuses on the interface between hydrological process understanding, water resources management, and sustainable development. Specific societal challenges his work addresses include climate change adaptation, water security, and improving participation in knowledge production. He works extensively in the Global South, especially in the tropical Andes and south Asia.

Wouter Buytaert

Ting Sun

University of Reading

Dr Ting Sun is currently a NERC Independent Research Fellow hosted at Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, working on a five-year project entitled “Building Resilient Cities for Heat Waves”. Before joining U Reading in Jan 2016, Dr Sun worked as a postdoc research associate on urban hydrology (Jan 2014 – Dec 2015) at Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua University, China, where he got MEng (with distinction) and PhD.
Dr Sun has strong expertise in urban climate, hydrology and urban sustainability. He is the current lead developer of SUEWS, a state-of-the-art urban land surface model.

Ting Sun

Emmah Mwangi

University of Sussex

Former climate researcher at Kenya Red Cross Society currently a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Sussex. Climate scientist and doctoral researcher with interest in bridging the gap of climate information use in risk management.

Emmah Mwangi

Alison Sneddon

Practical Action Consulting UK

Alison Sneddon is a Disaster Risk Reduction Advisor at Practical Action, where she focuses on research on early warning systems, climate information services, and forecast-based early action and financing, with a particular emphasis on gender and social inclusion. She has a background in international development and development economics and is a member of SHEAR Knowledge Broker team.

Alison Sneddon

Martin Todd

University of Sussex

Professor of Climate Science at University of Sussex and Principal investigator of SHEAR consortium project ForPAc.

Martin Todd

Mary Kilavi

Kenya Meteorological Department

Kenya Meteorological Department and ForPAc researcher

Mary Kilavi

Bruce Malamud

King’s College London

Bruce is a Professor of Natural and Environmental Hazards at King's College London. His research focuses on a range of single hazards (landslides, wildfires, earthquakes, floods), multi-hazard interrelationships, anthropogenic processes and their relationship to natural hazards, and dynamic risk scenarios. He has extensive research in Africa and Asia, and is Co-PI of LANDSLIP and Co-I for ForPac.

Bruce Malamud

Claire Walsh

Dr Claire Walsh is a senior lecturer in the School of Engineering at Newcastle University. Her research interests lie in understanding flood risk in urban areas, and the role green infrastructure can play in mitigating this risk. She is currently Director of Research on the GCRF Hub, Water Security and Sustainable Development researching a ramge of water security challenges in Colombia, Ethiopia, India and Malaysia.

Claire Walsh

Wendy Matcham

Head of Resilient Environment, Natural Environment Research Council

Wendy joined NERC in August 2021 as Head of Resilient Environment, having previously worked for both ESRC and AHRC over 13 years in total. Currently Wendy is responsible for designing and commissioning research programmes that fall within the resilient environment theme, and cover areas such as water quality and security as well as understanding and response to natural hazards and resilience to climate change and other changes.

Wendy Matcham

Mirianna Budimir

Senior Disaster Risk Reduction Adviser, Practical Action Consulting

Dr Mirianna Budimir is the Senior Disaster Risk Reduction Advisor for Practical Action Consulting UK. Her work at Practical Action includes improving the science-practice interface on topics such as disaster risk reduction, early warning services, end-mile communication, gender, and international development. She is a Knowledge Broker for the SHEAR programme and worked on the SHEAR LANDSLIP project, with a focus on legacy and sustainability.

Mirianna Budimir

Jeffrey Neil

University of Bristol

Jeffrey Neil

Huili Chen

Loughborough University

Huili Chen

Ramesh Guntha

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India

Ramesh Guntha

Lewis Blunn

UK Met Office

Lewis Blunn

Faith Mithieu

University of Reading

Faith Mithieu

Simphiwe Laura Stewart

consultant for Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and DPhil student at University of Oxford

Simphiwe Laura Stewart

Rebeka Ryvola

Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre

Rebeka Ryvola

Jean-Christophe Comte

University of Aberdeen

Jean-Christophe Comte

Douglas Mulangwa

Ministry of Water and the Environment Uganda

Douglas Mulangwa

Sazzad Hossain