Research

Historically, humanitarianism has been constructed through action.  However, over the last 30 years it has become the subject of research and training.  Humanitarian NGOs were the first to reflect theoretically on their experience.   For a long period, medicine and the law were the two dominant academic disciplines of humanitarian research and were therefore the first to benefit from academic investigation.  Nowadays, however, many other disciplines are involved when the content of humanitarian education and research is discussed.  Anthropology, sociology, psychology, economics or political science are all participants.  Education and research in humanitarian action have become multidisciplinary.

To different degrees and in several disciplines, CERAH teaching staff are also researchers; some have long experience in the field.  Several individual or collaborative research programmes are under development in various countries in crisis.  A Scientific Committee supervises the research projects.  A collection of research papers will be launched in 2010 and will be made available here.