In the three-year period of 1992-94, six disastrous tsunami (tidal wave) events occurred in the world with run-up heights exceeding five metres and the total casualties about 1500. After each of these tsunami disasters, international multi-disciplinary survey teams consisting of geologists, seismologists, oceanographers and engineers were dispatched to collect field data. Various research projects have been developed using these data to study earthquake source, generation, propogation and run-up processes of tsunamis, and deposition and erosions due to tsunamis. This text, which is reprinted from a special issue of PAGEOPH (Pure and Applied Geophysics), contains 26 papers addressing various aspects of these tsunami events. Papers include field survey reports of recent tsunamis in Indonesia, Japan, Philippines and Kurils, and observational and analytical works on tsunamis in the United States and Nicaragua. Research papers range from a seismological analysis of the tsunamigenic earthquake, hydrodynamic modelling of the recent tsunamis through numerical, analytical and physical methods, and studies of sand deposits from recent tsunamis and the implication for those generated by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.