Terry Cannon

Terry Cannon has worked on disaster vulnerability alongside teaching and researching in development studies for nearly fifty years, with a major specialism in disaster risk. He is affiliated to the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex (UK) where he researched climate change adaptation and taught in the Master of Science climate change, development and policy course. He is also Honorary Professor at University College London in the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction and teaches in postgraduate disaster and climate change there and at King’s College London, and previously at the University of Copenhagen and many other universities in Asia and Europe.

From 2005 he worked with the International Federation of Red Cross/Crescent Societies to build their Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment approach. In 2009 he helped Saleem Huq set up the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at Independent University, Bangladesh where he was active in the early development of ideas for ‘Community Based Adaptation’. This was linked to research and capacity building for students, government and non-governmental organizations, including training courses on climate change and disaster reduction in Asia and Africa.

Cannon is one of the co-authors (with Blaikie, Davis and Wisner) of At Risk: natural hazards, people’s vulnerability and disasters, one of the most widely cited and used books in the field (1994; 2004; Spanish 1996; Japanese 2011). In 2014 he co-authored and co-edited the international Red Cross World Disasters Report 2014: focus on Culture and Risk: https://www.ifrc.org/document/world-disasters-report-2014