Briefly Noted

Issue Date: 
February 21, 2011

GSPIA Sets Feb. 22 Lecture On Private Sector Role In Disaster Risk Reduction

The University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) will present Brent H. Woodworth at 3 p.m. Feb. 22 to deliver a free public lecture titled “Metropolitan Regions at Risk: The Role and Responsibility of the Private Sector in Disaster Risk Reduction” in Room 3911 Posvar Hall.

Woodworth will discuss how disaster-response actions change when working in a politically unstable environment, which actions work best when responding to disasters in economically challenged or underdeveloped countries, and what methods and systems have proved to be successful in global crises.

Woodworth is the chair of the Sahana Software Foundation, which seeks to alleviate human suffering by giving emergency managers, disaster-response professionals, and communities access to the information needed to better prepare for and respond to disasters through the development and promotion of free and open-source software and open standards. He is also the president of the Los Angeles Emergency Preparedness Foundation. Woodworth has led on-site disaster response and recovery efforts for more than 70 major events in 49 countries.

The event is presented by GSPIA’s Center for Disaster Management, Center for Metropolitan Studies (formerly the Innovation Clinic), and Ford Institute for Human Security. For more information, contact GSPIA professor Louise Comfort at 412-648-7606 or comfort@gspia.pitt.edu.

—By Amanda Leff Ritchie

Pitt-Greensburg’s La Cultura Lecture Series to Focus on India

The University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg’s La Cultura Lecture Series will present a lecture titled “Religion in India: Ancient Concepts and Current Issues,” which will be given by Milica Bakic-Hayden at 7 p.m. Feb. 28 in Village Hall 118.

Bakic-Hayden is a visiting lecturer in the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Religious Studies. Her areas of expertise are religion and society in the Balkans and South Asia and topics in comparative religion. She is a core faculty member of the Indo-Pacific Studies Program, Asian Studies Center, and Center for Russian and East European Studies in Pitt’s University Center for International Studies. Currently she is a contributor and workshop participant in the United Nations Development Fund for Women Program titled “Women Building Peace and Human Security in Western Balkans” and is editing a book-length manuscript, Religion in the Balkans: Traditions in Dialogue.

Additional information is available at www.greensburg.pitt.edu.

—By Susan M. Isola