Speaker Profiles
Julian Agyeman
February 16, 2012
7:00 pm to 8:30 pm
Clarke Science 128
Rhode Island College
Free Admission
The Sustainable Communities Initiative (SCI) and Rhode Island College (RIC) invite you to attend the inaugural presentation of the Critical Issues in Sustainability speaker series, "Just Sustainabilities: Re-imagining (E)quality, Living Within Limits", presented by Julian Agyeman Ph.D. FRSA.
Julian Agyeman is Professor and Chair of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University, Boston-Medford, USA. He is co-originator of the concept of ‘just sustainabilities,’ the integration of social/spatial justice and sustainability, defined as “the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems”.
He is co-founder, and co-editor of the international journal 'Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability'. His expertise and research interests critically explore aspects of the complex and embedded relations between humans and the environment, whether mediated by institutions or social movement organizations, and the effects of this on public policy and planning processes and outcomes, particularly in relation to notions of justice and equity.
With over 150 publications, his books include ‘Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World' (MIT Press 2003); 'Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice' (NYU Press 2005) ); The New Countryside? Ethnicity, Nation and Exclusion in Contemporary Rural Britain (The Policy Press 2009); Speaking for Ourselves. Environmental Justice in Canada (The University of British Columbia Press 2009); Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union (MIT Press 2009); Environmental Inequites Beyond Borders: Local Perspectives on Global Injustices' (MIT Press 2011) and 'Cultivating Food Justice : Race, Class and Sustainability' (MIT Press 2011).
He is Series Editor of Just Sustainabilities: Policy, Planning and Practice (Zed Books). He is a Fellow of the UK Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA), a member of the Board of Massachusetts Audubon Society and Second Nature, and is on the Editorial Boards of Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy and the Australian Journal of Environmental Education.
Karl Jacoby
March 1, 2012
7:00pm to 9:00pm
Clarke Science 128
Rhode Island College
Free Admission
Dr. Karl Jacoby is a Professor of History at Brown University and an award winning author. His book titles include, Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History (2009) and Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation (2003). His first book examined the ways in which the U.S. sought, through the conservation movement, to exert new forms of control over nature, while his second project focused on the ways in which the tremendous violence towards American Indians that accompanied the "frontier" has been remembered and forgotten in the intervening years. He is also the author of numerous award winning essays and articles.
At Brown University, Dr. Jacoby’s teaching includes Environmental History, Native American History, Borderlands and Western U.S. History.
Numi Mitchell
March 1, 2012
7:00pm to 9:00pm
Clarke Science 128
Rhode Island College
Free Admission
Dr. Numi Mitchell is the Lead Scientist and Project Director of the Narragansett Bay Coyote Study. She has extensive international experience in biological inventory work, endangered species issues and management, identification of critical resources and habitats, habitat restoration, and issues involving invasive exotic species. While Mitchell regards New England as her base of operations, she has done biological survey work in North Carolina, Florida, California, Mexico and Southern Coastal U.S., on 17 Caribbean islands, the Turks and Caicos Banks, the Hong Kong Archipelago, and the monsoon forests of tropical China.
Her management recommendations focus on maximizing biodiversity through habitat preservation, restoration, or recovery programs for “flagship species” which positively impact the native biotic communities they are a part of. Her research focus continues to be wildlife ecology and resource use, particularly the identification of critical resources for endangered species. She delights in finding innovative ways to study aspects of animal ecology and incorporating the involvement of students or volunteers in her project design. In the past decade, restoration of rare native species – for which there are great opportunities in Rhode Island - has become a more central theme in her work.
Dr. Maia Bailey is Assistant Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Providence College. She has been the recipient of numerous prestigious honors and awards. Most recently Professor Bailey's work has appeared in the journals Molecular Biology, Annals of Botany, Oikos, Genetics, American Journal of Botany, and Trends in Ecology and Evolution. She focuses her work on plant breeding system evolution.
Dr. Bailey received her A.B. from the University of Chicago and her Ph.D. from Indiana University.
Dr. Jeffrey O’Hara is an agricultural economist in the Food & Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Dr. O’Hara researches and advocates for federal programs, including those in the farm bill, that provide financial incentives to farmers engaging in environmentally sustainable practices. His expertise also includes local food systems and community development.
Before joining UCS, Dr. O’Hara worked at the Chicago Climate Exchange and was responsible for designing institutions that facilitated the transfer of licenses in markets that either promoted water conservation or improved water quality. He also served as a consultant to the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority, working on the design and implementation of a nutrient credit clearinghouse to support the state’s Chesapeake Bay water quality trading program. At the conclusion of the project, he administered the first two cleared forward contract auctions for nutrient credits. Dr. O’Hara has held previous positions with the Congressional Budget Office and Charles River Associates.
Dr. O’Hara has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and a B.S. in economics from The George Washington University.
Dr. Katherine Brown is the Executive Director at Southside Community Land Trust, where for 30 years they have been helping people grow food.
Katherine came to the work of urban agriculture in 1995 when founding City Sprouts, a project like the Southside Community Land Trust in Omaha NE.
Inspired by the immediate and far-reaching effects that she observed when people gather to grow food together in the city in 2000 Katherine left a two-decade career and tenure as a professor in health policy and ethics to promote urban agriculture as a potent agent for positive community, environmental, and economic change. She has published several seminal articles about urban agriculture and speaks widely on the subject. Katherine's PhD is from Columbia University in Socio-medical Sciences, specializing in public health policy and cultural anthropology.
She’s been with the Land Trust since 2003, and she is a founding member of the newly launched RI Food Policy Council.
Dr. Joan Fitzgerald is the Director of the Law and Public Policy Program at Northeastern University. Previously, Dr. Fitzgerald taught urban policy and public affairs at the New School University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Ohio State University.
Professor Fitzgerald is the author of Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development (Oxford Univ. Press, 2010), which examines how U.S. and Western European cities are addressing the interrelated issues of global warming, energy dependence and opportunities for green economic development. This potential includes building new technology-based industry clusters, improving the efficiency of production in existing manufacturing processes, and creating well-paying green jobs in construction, manufacturing, and entirely new advanced technology sectors.
Emerald Cities builds on her co-authored 2002 economic development book, Economic Revitalization: Strategies and Cases for City and Suburb (see below), which examines how traditional economic development strategies can be used to promote more sustainable and equitable development. It also integrates questions raised in her second book, Moving Up in the New Economy (Cornell Univ. Press, 2006), which focuses on strategies for helping low-wage workers advance into better paying positions through skills upgrading.
She is currently working on two articles and an edited book series. The first article examines the relative influence of EU mandates and programs, national policy and local planning practices on the success of climate change planning in Stockholm and Malmö and discusses the relevance of the Swedish experience for US cities. The second article analyzes business involvement in urban climate change initiatives in US and European cities.
Fitzgerald and Ph.D. candidate M.J. Motta are editing a three-volume set, Cities and Sustainability, for the Routledge Critical Concepts in Urban Studies series.
She is organizing the Emerald Cities Network, an organization of universities supporting their cities in pursuing climate change initiatives and policies.
Jim Merkel is the author of Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth and directs the Global Living Project that consults with campuses and municipalities and offers workshops and lectures. His recent work helped Dartmouth earn the highest grade given on the Sustainability Report Card issued by the Sustainable Endowments Institute for the two years he led the campus’s sustainability efforts.
Originally a military engineer trained in foreign military sales, the Exxon Valdez disaster and the invasion of Iraq prompted him to devote his life to sustainability and world peace. Jim founded the Global Living Project (GLP) and initiated the GLP Summer Institute where teams of researchers attempted to live on an equitable portion of the biosphere.
While at Dartmouth, Jim worked to integrate environmentally and socially sustainable practices into the College's operations and culture. His projects included Sustainable Dining, Solar Thermal Evaluation, Carbon Reduction, Sustainable Offices, Green Greeks and Solid Waste Reduction.
