Researcher to Reader is pleased to announce that Professor Ilan Kelman has joined the R2R Advisory Board.

Ilan is Professor of Disasters and Health at University College London and Professor II at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. His overall research interest is linking disasters and health, while integrating climate change into both. His work focuses on three main areas: disaster diplomacy and health diplomacy; island sustainability, with attention to safe and healthy living and livelihoods; and risk education for health and disasters.

His perspective will be especially valuable as R2R explores the development of a science diplomacy strand. This strand would connect with R2R’s existing strengths in science communication, research assessment, and data and publication infrastructure, while opening space for discussion of how science, policy, diplomacy, security, and research governance increasingly interact.

R2R intends to examine developments such as “Defence Research in European Universities: A Conceptual Framework” and the launch of the Defence University Alliance. These developments point to wider trends in which peer review, research assessment, institutional strategy, security concerns, and political review are becoming more visibly connected. Arguably, political review has always existed in research, but its visibility and force appear to be changing, and research communities need serious spaces to analyse what this means in practice. R2R will refrain from promoting ideological and rhetorical dispositions, but will try to identify practices, present and analyse them. 

R2R will keep its focus on practice exchange, analysis, and networking. As the conference develops into a more continuous forum, Ilan’s experience in disaster diplomacy and health diplomacy can help the Advisory Board steer a thoughtful science diplomacy strand into the R2R scope, supporting meaningful conversations and helping the community identify and share best practices in response to emerging trends.

We warmly welcome Professor Ilan Kelman to the R2R Advisory Board.

More about Ilan’s work is available here:
https://www.ilankelman.org/
https://www.disasterdiplomacy.org/

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