Welcome from Environmental Studies Chair Rafi Youatt
Message from the Chair
Rafi Youatt
Chair, Environmental Studies
September 8, 2017
Welcome, everyone, to the 2017-18 year in Environmental Studies! I hope everyone is settling into the semester.
I wanted to take this chance to introduce myself as the new chair of Environmental Studies. I’m coming from NSSR and Lang College, where my teaching and research have been in global political ecology and environmental political theory. I’ve written on the politics of global biodiversity, and am working on a new project on the politics of ecological management in American borderlands (more on my research here). I’ve co-taught in Environmental Studies in the past, which I thoroughly enjoyed and which really drew me to this program. Part of what I find so interesting about environmental issues is how multi-faceted they are – while I’m deeply motivated by the hard work of trying to fix what is broken, I’m also aware of how important it is to consider the different ways of thinking needed to do that work, whether through the intensive research of natural sciences, the analysis of policy choices, or the rigorous understanding of social structures and cultural patterns. The ES program here really brings these many modes of knowledge together, and gets us thinking and working on addressing environmental issues with the kind of complexity and sophistication that the issues themselves demand.
This welcome letter has been a little slow in coming, as I’ve been busy getting to know the faculty, staff, and students here in Environmental Studies. I’m amazed at the kinds of work I’m hearing about so far, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to be a part of it. I also can’t think of a more important time to be in a program like this, given the challenges and opportunities surrounding environmental issues of all kinds right now.
I want to welcome Elizabeth Cook, who is joining us this year as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Elizabeth is an urban ecosystem ecologist, and she is teaching Urban Ecology this semester. Her research focuses on future urban sustainability and human-environment feedbacks in urban and nearby native ecosystems. She conducts research on sustainability and resilience planning through participatory scenario development with local stakeholders and assessing how urban governance and knowledge networks influence planning in Latin American and US cities. She was previously a Chilean National Science and Technology post-doctoral fellow at the Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia and received her PhD at Arizona State University.
I also want to thank Timon McPhearson for all his work as chair in past years. He is on a well-deserved sabbatical this semester, though he’ll remain involved in a number of ways, but we look forward to having him back full-time in the spring.
Finally, I really want to encourage everyone to come by the Welcome Reception for Environmental Studies, together with Global Studies and Urban Studies (the GLUE programs). This is taking place next Thursday, September 14th, from 6:30 pm to 8 pm – more details are below. Please come and say hello!
I look forward to meeting many more of you in the very near future, and to continuing to build the Environmental Studies community and program. Please feel free to reach out to me at any point.
Best,
Rafi
Rafi Youatt
Chair, Environmental Studies
youattr@newschool.edu