The Nature-Society Workshop at Rutgers

On 11 and 12 October, graduate students Alexandria Casteel, Mayra Flores Munoz, Michelle Irengbam and Dennis Webster, along with EEES faculties Abigail Neely, Christopher Sneddon, Laura Ogden and Maron Greenleaf, attended the Nature and Society Workshop at Rutgers University. This is an annual meeting that brings together faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from nine regional universities to explore key issues at the intersection of environmental and social sciences. This was a 2-day event consisting of panels led by graduate students, feature workshops tailored for graduate students, and thematic sessions.

On the first day, the event kicked off with a graduate student panel titled "Fieldwork in Times of Crises" where graduate student representatives from the participating universities shared their experiences dealing with a crisis during their fieldwork and how they navigated these crises. Michelle Irengbam, who studies environmental/hydropower conflicts in securitized regions, was the Dartmouth representative in this panel discussion (see Picture 1). Next was a plenary session titled "Just Transitions: Critical Responses to Complex Environmental Change," featuring speakers from several participating universities: Gustavo Oliveira (Clark), Jenny Baka (Penn State), Ida Djenontin (Penn State), Meredith Palmer (Buffalo), Kim Thomas (Temple), Jamie Shinn (SUNY ESF). This session explored the ways geographers are engaging with questions around just transition and the possibilities for achieving genuine transformation within a context of rapid and unprecedented environmental change.

graduate student panel

Graduate student panel

The second day of the workshop started with a keynote speech by Marion Werner (University of Buffalo SUNY) titled "The Agrochemical Complex: From the pesticide treadmill to chemical geographies." This was followed by two sessions of graduate student dissertation workshops, where students had the opportunity to submit their chapters for collective feedback from faculty and postdocs. During the second session, Casteel workshopped a chapter from her dissertation on forms of Black environmental care in Baltimore (see Picture 2).

In addition to these sessions, the workshop offered a great opportunity for graduate students to network with their peers and faculty in Geography and related fields. Other EEES students participating in the workshop included Flores Munoz, who studies the páramo, a high-altitude Andean biome, and Webster, whose research focuses on urban afforestation in Johannesburg (Picture 3).

Chapter workshop session

Chapter workshop session for Alexandria Casteel

EEES graduate students

EEES graduate students at the Nature-Society Workshop at Rutgers