Biography
Peter is a human geographer interested in the relationships between disasters and development. He is a Research Associate in the Department of Geography at King’s College London, working on the “Improving household preparedness in multi-hazard contexts” project.
Peter completed an MSc in Disaster Management & Sustainable Development at Northumbria University before moving to the Department of Geography at King’s College London to pursue his PhD (2018-2022).
Peter's PhD research was a qualitative investigation into the causes and impacts of landslides in Kalimpong District, West Bengal, India. Shortly after his PhD in 2022, Peter worked as a Senior Research Associate at the United Nations University: Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) on a short-term project looking at the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrant workers in Kerala, India. He then worked as Lecturer in Development Geography at Oxford Brookes University 2022-2024. There he led modules on the geographies of disasters and development and taught across a wide array of human geography modules. He maintains an interest in the interactions of science and policy following his completion of a 3-month UKRI Policy Internship with the UK Government Office for Science (GO-Science) Futures, Foresight, and Horizon Scanning team during his PhD.
Research
- Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Management (DRM)
- Disaster management policy and practice
- Geographies of disasters and development India and South Asia Landslides
- The Himalayas Preparedness Multi-hazards Post-structural theory Geographical theory
Peter’s research interests centre on the geographies of disasters and development. This not only involves understanding how disasters impact development, for example by negatively affecting people’s livelihoods and sense of place, but also how disasters are themselves outcomes of development processes. In that sense, his research tends to locate everyday problems in what are often viewed to be “exceptional” disaster events. For example, his PhD research highlighted connections between landslide disasters and on-going road infrastructure development in the Eastern Himalayas; and his research at UNU-EHS showed that the everyday struggles of domestic migrants to assert their citizenship rights in India worsened their experience of the pandemic.
Peter is interested in what these issues mean for policymaking at various scales, and ultimately how and whether Disaster Risk Reduction should be embedded within mainstream policymaking processes. To that end, his current research is focused on the coproduction of knowledge and policy about disaster preparedness in low-income contexts.