On July 14, 2026, the Institute for Disaster Management and Reconstruction (IDMR) of Sichuan University successfully held a special academic lecture on transdisciplinary disaster management. Invited from the Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London (UCL), Professor Peter Sammonds and Associate Professor Lisa Guppy delivered the keynote lecture entitled Transdisciplinary Teaching and Research for Disaster Management and Humanitarian Response. The event was attended by Dean Professor Di Baofeng, as well as faculty members and students from IDMR.
In his opening remarks, Dean Di briefly introduced IDMR’s core teaching and research orientations. He highlighted the institute’s persistent emphasis on interdisciplinary innovation and its firm commitment to advancing high-level international academic cooperation. Following the opening session, participating teachers and students introduced their respective research fields, laying a solid foundation for future academic exchanges, consulting collaborations and joint research with the two UCL scholars.
Professor Sammonds then delivered his keynote presentation. He systematically elaborated on the interdisciplinary operational framework of UCL’s disaster discipline, the evolutionary context of modern scientific disciplines, and the institutional obstacles constraining academic collaboration in the UK higher education system. He stressed that transdisciplinary research serves as an effective approach to tackling complex real-world disaster challenges. By breaking through the boundaries of single-discipline paradigms, integrating multi-domain knowledge, and adopting participatory research methods, this model delivers more targeted and practical solutions for natural hazard prevention, mitigation and response.
Subsequently, Associate Professor Lisa Guppy focused on UCL’s Bachelor of Science in Global Humanitarian Studies program. She analyzed the key difficulties in interdisciplinary teaching for disaster and humanitarian disciplines, and shared targeted practical solutions including joint academic evaluation mechanisms and student community empowerment initiatives. She also shared valuable experience in optimizing curriculum coherence and assessment system design, and emphasized the significance of building inclusive collaborative platforms. Such platforms enable professionals from engineering, policy research and other diverse backgrounds to jointly promote innovative development in humanitarian and disaster response fields.
The lecture concluded with an interactive Q&A session, where IDMR’s teachers and students raised in-depth questions and conducted targeted discussions with Professor Sammonds and Associate Professor Guppy around transdisciplinary teaching reform and frontier research in disaster management.
In his closing speech, Dean Di Baofeng expressed sincere gratitude to the UCL team for their insightful sharing. He fully affirmed the advanced experience of UCL’s transdisciplinary teaching and research system, and noted that IDMR will take this lecture as an opportunity to deepen academic exchanges with UCL, actively explore long-term collaborative mechanisms in interdisciplinary talent cultivation and scientific research innovation, and boost the international development of the institute’s disaster management discipline.
