The main aim was to put into conversation established areas of geographical thought on disaster and natural hazards with emerging work in cultural geography on emotion and affect. Critical analysis of conducting research in the post disaster environment carries with it very particular sets of researcher-researched relationships. I focused on relocation firstly as I am not from CHCH, nor is my family and I didn’t experience the earthquakes. Immediately, I did not feel comfortable flying down to CHCH to conduct research as an outsider Utilising emotion and affect as a framework for interrogating disasters allowed me to focus not only on the micro scale but also on how people are drawn into collectives