Prof. Zainab Ali visited Keio University in the month of December 2019. During her visit to Keio University, she delivered four lectures in two courses, coordinated by Prof. Rajib Shaw, namely ‘Environmental Risk Science (9th and 16th December) and ‘Geography of Planning (10th and 17th December). The course ‘Environmental Risk Science’ is for Undergraduate students, while the course ‘Geography of Planning’ comprises of both Undergraduate and Post Graduate Students. Accordingly, during her lectures, Prof. Ali discussed a range of topics that were of interest to students from different backgrounds including Architecture, civil engineering, disaster risk reduction etc. In all, Prof. Ali shared her wide experience in the field of disaster management with BRAC and other organizations, while discussing case study examples of Bangladesh, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, United States etc. The topic of ongoing Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh was of high interest to students, as the lecture provided grassroot level information supported with pictures, audio-visuals and field work of BRAC University. In one of her lectures, she also discussed the changing climate and the increasing role of building design and architecture in maintaining in-house temperature and green house gas emissions. The traditional architecture across the world was been discussed to explain the best practices to students and encourage them to look for new alternatives to address climate issues.
Prof. Ali also shared the extensive work been conducted in BRAC (largest non-governmental organization in the world) University students with the local community members in countries around the world including Post-Haiti Earthquake (2010) and Post Cyclone Aila (2009). Most importantly, the students had the opportunity to learn both the theoretical and practical aspects of Disaster situations.