With support from the Mark MaGrann endowment, this event brought together over one hundred faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students to discuss critical issues at the intersection of environmental and social sciences.
Participants came mostly from Geography and Geography-adjacent departments at nine regional universities: Clark, Cornell, Dartmouth, Pennsylvania State, Rutgers, SUNY-ESF, Syracuse, Temple, and University at Buffalo. The Nature and Society Workshop fosters intellectual exchange through panel discussions, research talks, dissertation workshops, and local field trips, and it rotates annually around universities in the US Northeast.
This year, the Nature and Society Workshop kicked off with a panel of graduate students discussing the intersectional and geopolitical challenges of conducting fieldwork in the contemporary moment. They reflected in particular on how positionality shapes methodological choices as well as intellectual contributions.
Next, a panel of geography faculty reflected on the concept of “transition” embedded in calls for a global energy transition. Drawing on experiences working with communities across the US and around the world, panelists highlighted the uneven social burdens (and financial gains) associated with mainstream approaches to energy transition.
Professor Marion Werner from the Department of Geography at the University at Buffalo was the keynote speaker for the Nature and Society Workshop. Her talk traced the global pesticide economy, moving beyond the “pesticide treadmill” and toward a theory of the uneven geography of pesticide production and application.
The highlight of the Nature and Society event was the dissertation chapter workshop component. Through supportive and constructive conversations, doctoral candidates received feedback on dissertation chapter drafts from faculty and postdoctoral fellows from outside their home institutions. Other graduate students also attended the workshops and learned about the iterative process of drafting strong dissertation chapters.
The two-day event concluded with a walking tour around New Brunswick led by Claudio Mir, Senior Program Coordinator for Community Outreach in the Rutgers Collaborative Center for Community Engagement and co-director of the Advancing Community Development (ACD) Program. Centering New Brunswick’s strong tradition of public art, the tour explored the history of local immigration and community development.
The Nature and Society Workshop was organized by Assistant Professor of Geography Andrea Marston, Associate Professor of Geography Kevon Rhiney, and Geography Doctoral Candidates Jamie Gagliano and Alex Liebman.
