Richard Haigh

30 Last checked 23 June 2020

Professor Richard Haigh joined the University of Huddersfield in 2014 as Co-Director of the Global Disaster Resilience Centre, now located in the Department of Biological and Geographic Sciences, School of Applied Sciences. This multi-disciplinary Centre is committed to excellence in research and collaboration to improve the resilience of nations and communities to disasters.

Richard was previously a Professor at the University of Salford, where he studied and worked for 20 years. He undertook a degree in Construction Management before commencing his doctoral studies in 1998, which focused on the development of a process capacity maturity model for the construction industry. Richard worked as a research assistant and fellow in several major EPSRC and NHS funded projects prior to joining the University as a lecturer in 2003. Richard went on to contribute to a wide range of teaching and research activities at Salford’s School of the Built Environment, while also serving in several School management roles, including as Director of Research Training and Co-Director of Postgraduate Research for the School’s 200+ PhD students. Richard became a Professor in 2012 and prior to joining Huddersfield in 2014, was Acting Associate Head of Research & Innovation at Salford’s School of the Built Environment, No.1 in Research Power at the last RAE for Architecture and the Built Environment.

In 2019, Richard won the Newton Prize for Indonesia, in collaboration with his colleagues, Professor Dilanthi Amaratunga, and and Dr Harkunti Rahayu from Institut Teknologi Bandung, for a project that is helping to protect coastal communities from the devastation caused by coastal hazards such as flooding and tsunamis.

His research interests are in field of disaster resilience in the built environment, with a focus on disaster risk governance and accountability, multi-hazard early warning and the last mile, convergence of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaption, and post-conflict reconstruction.