Managing Risk in the April 2015 Earthquake: Autoethnographic Narratives of a Teacher and a Student

In these autoethnographic narratives of a university teacher and a student, we reflect on the intricate dynamics of managing educational activities in an emergency. We locate our experiences focusing on the aftermath of the devastating April 2015 earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8Mw in Kathmandu. We explore the struggles we encountered and cope with the challenges in the educational context with special reference to the Department of Language Education at Kathmandu University during the uncertainty caused by the April 2015 earthquake. Drawing on the autoethnographic approach, we bring our anecdotal narratives to understand the complex interplay of risk, resilience, and educational activities. Our experiences of our efforts provide insight into re-establishing a sense of normalcy facing the disruption caused by the earthquake disaster. We analyze these narratives thematically within the theoretical frameworks of risk society theory and the theory of resilience. This paper contributes to the discourse of emergency in education with specific reference to Nepal.