Curriculum Vitae#
Ilan is Professor of Disasters and Health at University College London (UCL), UK as a joint appointment with the Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction and the Institute for Global Health. He is also Professor II at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and Visiting Researcher at the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, Germany. His overall research interest is linking disasters and health, integrating climate change into both. Three main areas to connect these topics are: (i) disaster diplomacy, health diplomacy, and climate diplomacy; (ii) safe and healthy living and livelihoods for islands and the polar regions; and (iii) risk education for health and disasters. This work links directly to and collaborates with other fields including migration studies, international relations, peace and conflict studies, development studies, tourism research, and geoethics.
Ilan's Bachelor and Masters degrees are from the University of Toronto, Canada, which included work experience in Canada’s subarctic on climate change impacts and in Ireland for local implementation of renewable energy. Then, he worked for a year in Barbados on international development projects, for a nongovernmental organisation and the United Nations. Next, he completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK where he remained for a postdoctoral fellowship which incorporated being a visiting researcher in New Zealand for six months. He was awarded another postdoctoral fellowship in Boulder, Colorado before becoming a Senior Research Fellow in Oslo, Norway. He moved to UCL as a Reader before being promoted to Professor.
His research career has been about diversity and linking fields. Crossing and connecting disciplines has resulted in winning research grants ranging from small projects of several thousand GBP through to larger projects of more than a million GBP. His academic publications--deliberately seeking a variety of forms and venues--comprise 2 authored books, 3 co-authored books, over 200 papers, over 80 book chapters, and over 25 edited or co-edited books, book series, and journal issues. Ilan translates his research for use and for the public, through popular science dissemination including hundreds of blogs and commentaries, hundreds of talks in schools and public venues, and frequent worldwide media coverage of his research, in addition to vlogs and private talks to the for-profit, non-profit, and public sectors.
Ilan's photography contributes to this dissemination, including using his photos in peer-reviewed publications. He has researched and published with professional artists, producing research outputs of written poetry, read poetry, photo essays, and performing arts. He has applied these experiences to the classroom, notably through multimedia teaching approaches and creative assessments balancing the testing of skills and subject knowledge.
These achievements have been recognised through awards for career achievements, research, teaching, and public service.
