Dr. Trevor Birkenholtz
Department of Geography - Livingston Campus, Lucy Stone Hall, room B255
54 Joyce Kilmer Drive
Piscataway NJ 08854-8045
Tel: 848.445.2445
Fax: 732.445.0006
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Curriculum Vita

Research Interests:

I am a cultural and political ecologist, and development geographer. My work attempts to link the political economy of access to and control over environmental resources, and ecological change (political ecology), to issues of technology, knowledge, and social power, more typical of research in science and technology studies (STS). To date, I have advanced these concerns by investigating the transformation of groundwater-based irrigation, and urban and rural water supplies in South Asia. 

I am currently working on four interrelated projects. The first three are based in India and focus on the politics of water scarcity related to ongoing urban and rural transformations, and climate change induced socioecological variability. On the fourth project, I am working with a team of researchers from Rutgers and from multiple UK universities to examine the relationship between Payments for Environmental Services (PES), equity and poverty alleviation.

1.  Urban water scarcity and governance reforms.

This project investigates the political ecological effects of the expansion of an urban centralized water-supply network and the transformation of it into a “full cost recovery” system in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India (Environment and Planning A, 2010). It examines the ways that these processes rework the existing informal ways that people access water, leading to new kinds of socially and spatially differentiated practices and institutions. Future work will examine continued, expanded cost-recovery initiatives and their relationship to service provision.

2.  Urbanizing water and reduced access to irrigation.

This research seeks to examine the effects of expanding rural to urban transfers of water under conditions of neoliberal water supply development and increasingly variable water supplies. Evidence suggests that water resources development is shifting away from rural to urban areas, as returns on investments in water-supply infrastructure are greater in quickly growing urban centers throughout the Global South. This has profound implications on already over-utilized water supplies, particularly for established irrigation systems and food security. This work is currently being funded through the Rutgers Faculty Research Grant Program, beginning summer 2012. I also have a proposal currently under review with National Geographic that, if funded, will support future research on this topic.

3.  Climate change vulnerability and adaptation among groundwater-dependent irrigating farmers.

This research expands on previous research described above by tracing the spatial relationships between these processes and climate change induced social-ecological variability, informal and formal climate change adaptation strategies, and multi-scalar economic processes (Progress in Human Geography, 2012). This work is currently being funded through an American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Senior Research Grant. This area of inquiry has resulted in one research paper thus far (The Professional Geographer, Accepted) and a proposal under review with the National Science Foundation to further this research.

4.  Safeguarding local equity as global values of ecosystem services rise.

Through a ESPA grant from the UK’s NERC and DFID (PI, Dr. Kate Schreckenberg, University of Southampton), I am a member of a diverse team of social and physical scientists examining the recent upsurge in projects advocating for payments for environmental services (PES), such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) or as a way to simultaneously meet conservation and sustainable development goals. Specifically, my component investigates the relationship between poverty alleviation, equity and PES in watershed services through the creation of a background paper on this topic (Environmental Science and Policy, In Revision).

In addition to these substantive research concerns, I am working to combine my experiences with development in South Asia into a text aimed at undergraduate courses on the topic. It will be a part of Routledge's "Perspectives on Development Series". The book, South Asian Development, is due out in 2014.

01:450:341: South Asia: Environment, Development and Society

01:450:360: Cultural and Political Ecology

01:450:405: Political Geography

01:450:470: History and Theory of Geography

16:450:510: Water and Social Power

16:450:510: Social Power, Institutions and the Environment

16:450:605: Qualitative Methods

16:450:602: Research Design

Education:

Ph.D. Geography, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH. 2007.

M.A. Geography, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH. 2002.

B.A. Geography, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA. 1997.

A.A.S. Indian Hills Community College, Ottumwa, IA. 1993.

Students:

Diya Paul; Alison Horton; Kimberley Thomas; Kalpana Venkatasubramanian (ABD)

Recent Publications:

Birkenholtz, T. (Forthcoming). “Knowing Climate Change: Local Social Institutions and Adaptation in Rajasthan’s Groundwater Irrigation.” The Professional Geographer. For a special issue on “Climate Change in South Asia,” edited by Trevor Birkenholtz.

Birkenholtz, T. (In Press - Available Online). "On the Network, Off the Map: Developing inter-village and intra-gender differentiation in rural water-supply." Environment and Planning D: Society & Space.

Birkenholtz, T. (2012). "Network Political Ecology: method and theory in climate change vulnerability and adaptation research." Progress in Human Geography 36(3): 295-315.

Birkenholtz, T. (2010). "“Full Cost Recovery”: producing differentiated water collection practices and responses to centralized water networks in Jaipur, India." Environment and Planning A 42: 2238-2253.

Thomas Rudel, Laura C. Schneider , Maria Uriarte , B. Turner, Ruth DeFries, Deborah Lawrence , Jacqueline Geoghegan , Susanna Hecht , Amy Ickowitz, Eric Lambin, Trevor Birkenholtz , Sandra Baptista , Ricardo Grau, (2009) “Agricultural Intensification and Changes in Cultivated Areas, 1970-2005.” PNAS 106 (49): 20,675-20,680.

Birkenholtz, T. (2009). “Groundwater governmentality: hegemony and technologies of resistance in Rajasthan's (India) groundwater governance.” Geographical Journal 175 (3): 208-220.

Birkenholtz, T. (2009). “Irrigated Landscapes, Produced Scarcity, and Adaptive Social Institutions in Rajasthan, India.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99 (1): 118-137. 

283 Collective-Birkenholtz T., contributing author (2008). "What's Just? Afterthoughts on the Summer Institute for the Geographies of Justice 2007." Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 40(5): 736-750.

Birkenholtz, T. (2008). “Murky Waters: Mediating Local Institutions for Demand Side Solutions in Rajasthani Irrigation” in Culture, Polity and Economy. Varsha Joshi and Surjit Singh eds. Jaipur (India), Rawat Publications.

Birkenholtz, T. (2008). "Contesting Expertise: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Indian Groundwater Practices." Geoforum 39: 466-482

Birkenholtz, T. (2008). “‘Environmentality’ in Rajasthan’s Groundwater Sector:  Divergent Environmental Knowledges and Subjectivities” in Contentious Geographies: Environment, Meaning, Scale. M. Goodman, M. Boykoff and K. T. Evered eds. Aldershot, Ashgate Press 

Birkenholtz, T. (2007). "Groundwater" in Encyclopedia of Environment and Society, Robbins, P. (ed.), Thousand Oaks (CA): Sage, pages 828-831.  

Robbins, P and T. Birkenholtz. (2003). “Turfgrass Revolution: Measuring the Expansion of the American Lawn.” Land Use Policy. 20: 181-194.

Robbins, P., A. Polderman, and T. Birkenholtz. (2001). “Lawns and Toxins: an Ecology of the City” Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning. 18(6): 369-380.

Under Review:

Birkenholtz, T. (In Revision). “Equity and Payments for Watershed Ecosystem Services (PWES) in Irrigation Systems.” Environmental Science and Policy.