Greg Bankoffis Professor of Modern History at the University of Hull, United Kingdom. Hehas worked and published extensively on both the historical dimension of howsocieties adapt to risk as well as engaged with contemporary civil defence andemergency management practices in Asia, Australasia and more recently inEurope. His most recent publications include co-authoring The Red Cross’s World Disaster Report 2014: Culture and Riskand a companion coedited volume entitled Culturesand Disasters: Understanding Cultural Framings in Disaster Risk Reduction(2015). JosephChristensenis a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University,Australia, where he works in the fields of maritime and environmental history.He obtained a BA and PhD from the University of Western Australia. He isco-editor of Historical Perspectives ofFisheries Exploitation in the Indo-Pacific (2014).