Lucy Easthope is a leading authority on recovering from disaster. For over two decades she has challenged others to think differently about what comes next, after tragic events. She is a passionate and thought-provoking voice in planning for pandemics, conflict and disaster, and has been a tactical advisor to UK disaster responders since 2001. Her research and practice portfolio includes mass fatalities planning, legal aspects of emergencies, identifying lessons post-incident, the effectiveness of public inquiries, interoperability, and community resilience in practice.
Lucy has developed contingency plans, training programmes and exercises with a number of organisations including government bodies, charities, airports and airlines, universities and emergency services. She has participated in the response to many disasters and is currently advising on the consequences of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine as well as a number of other recent incidents. She has a special interest in the care and return of personal effects after a disaster, writing and advising internationally on this subject. Her further research interests include the effectiveness of legislation in the field of emergency management, children and young people in disaster and the human aspects of risk management, insurance and business continuity processes.
She is a member of the Cabinet Office National Risk Assessment Behavioural Science Expert Group. She sits on the editorial board of the Australian Journal of Emergency Management and the International Journal of Emergency Services. She is the holder of an ESRC Urgency Grant awarded in 2014 for researching the Disaster Victim Identification Process. Her first book ‘The Recovery Myth’ proved definitive on the challenges facing the UK in disaster recovery. She is the technical author of a number of international guidance documents and a complete list of publications is available from the author.
Based in the UK, she is known globally for her work. She holds an honorary position at the Joint Centre for Disaster Research, Massey University, New Zealand. She is a Professor in Practice of Risk and Hazard at the University of Durham and a co-founder of the After Disaster Network based in their Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience. She is a Fellow in Mass Fatalities and Pandemics at the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath. She is a former senior fellow of the Cabinet Office Emergency Planning College. She acts as the external examiner for a number of international disaster management postgraduate programmes.
Her new book When The Dust Settles Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster was released in March 2022 and is a Sunday Times Bestseller.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Higher Education Academy. She was awarded a special fellowship to the Emergency Planning Society for her services to the field in 2018. She holds an LLB (Bristol), Masters in Risk, Crisis and Disaster Management (Leicester) and PhD in Medicine (Lancaster).
Consultancy, review and research services are provided by her Limited Company, Whatever Next Productions.
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