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National | Canterbury

University to offer scholarships for research into effects of earthquakes

Post graduate students at the University of Canterbury are soon to be offered scholarships for postgraduate research into the effects of the 2010-2011 earthquakes.

This morning a ceremony was held at New Brighton beach as a memorial of the  first earthquake in Christchurch which struck five years ago today.

The scholarships being offered will have a strong focus on the lessons learned from the response.

Professor Paul Millar, who is the UC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive director, is concerned that as time passes, vital information about the response and recovery will be lost.

Funded by The Canterbury Community Trust, the initial four scholarships will support masters' students to research and write on aspects of the earthquake response and recovery that align with the strategic priorities of the Trust.

Those students who are successful will have their fees paid and will also receive a fixed sum of $12,000 to support them through a year of study.

Millar says These scholarships will be known as CEISMIC Learning Legacy Scholarships. CEISMIC has been collecting and preserving information about the effects of the earthquakes for the purposes of commemoration, teaching and research since 2011, but the response is ongoing and it is vital that research continues,"

His concern for the large amount of amount of material being lost led to the establishment of these scholarships.

He adds “When the government established CERA and SCIRT, they used legislation to require that each organisation created a learning legacy around the way they achieved their objectives. We need to emulate that by producing learning legacies from every group involved to learn lessons from the way emergency services, communities, councils, businesses, education providers, government agencies and others responded immediately and afterwards."

As well as there being a strong focus on the lessons learned from the response and recovery during the earthquakes, the first lot of scholarships will also cover other aspects.

Millar states “Topics for the first scholarships will include the way many activist organisations like Greening the Rubble and CanCERN sprang up after the quakes in response to community need; the impact the earthquakes had on the resilience, connections and networks of families in the Aranui High School zone; lessons about more effective disaster management strategies for local cultural institutions like galleries, archives and museums affected by the quakes; and the experiences of temporary migrant labourers who have come to assist with the Canterbury rebuild, but who are often extremely vulnerable when it comes to employment, immigration, accommodation and health."

There is now the hope that more organisations in the Canterbury area will follow suit and fund students to carry out research such as this.