Note to Editors: Reporters and photographers are welcome to attend the symposium, and panelists will be available for interviews after the program ends.
University of Colorado at Boulder experts in earthquakes and tsunamis, the sociology of disasters, and the various cultures and politics of the Indian Ocean region will gather Jan. 26 for a free public symposium.
The Tsunami Symposium, organized by anthropology Professor Dennis McGilvray and presented by CU-Boulder's Center for Asian Studies, will be from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the auditorium of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences in the Ekeley Sciences building. Each member of the panel will give a short presentation and there will be ample time for questions from the audience.
The seven-member panel of CU-Boulder professors will feature eyewitness accounts from anthropologist Patricia Lawrence, who arrived in Sri Lanka days after the tsunami and spent several weeks in the country at a children's trauma center. She studies social and religious patterns among Tamils in eastern Sri Lanka.
McGilvray will discuss ethnic politics in south India and Sri Lanka. The tsunami struck the site of McGilvray's ethnographic research on the Tamil community in Sri Lanka.
He said the two areas most severely affected by the earthquake and tsunami - eastern Sri Lanka and the Aceh province of Sumatra - are the sites of unrelated ethnic conflicts that have raged for decades. "I'm very interested in how the event will change each of these societies - culturally, ethnically and politically," McGilvray said.
Anthropologist Russ McGoodwin will offer insights on tsunami impacts on fisheries and fishing communities. He specializes in cultural and environmental factors affecting modern-day fishing communities around the world.
Geologist Carl Kisslinger, an expert on the type of tectonic plate subduction that caused the earthquake, will review the basic geology and physics of tsunamis. Sociologist Jeannette Sutton will discuss important factors in the sociology of tsunami disasters. Sutton works at the CU-Boulder Natural Hazards Center, part of the university's Institute for Behavioral Science, and specializes in the sociology of large-scale disasters. Kisslinger and Sutton will offer perspectives on what it will take to create a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean.
Political science Professor Kimberly Niles will talk about the state-level politics of the disaster in Indonesia, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka. Professor Fred Denny of religious studies will review Islam and Acehnese identity issues. Denny specializes in Islamic studies of Indonesia and Malaysia and has visited Aceh in northern Sumatra as part of his research.
McGilvray worked to assemble a panel with a wide variety of expertise and specific knowledge of the region affected by the tsunami. "We don't know what aspects of the disaster will be of interest to our audience, so we're leaving a lot of time for questions and the discussion might go in any direction," he said.
The CIRES building is located just south of Norlin Library on the Boulder campus. For more information, visit or call (303) 735-5312.