Synopsis
The podcast provides long-form interviews and conversations with leading academics and practitioners. Topics include science and academia, environmental social science and related fields, sustainability, critical thinking, methodologies, academic life, personal stories, reviews of the literature and more.
Episodes
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Insight #18: Joseph Ament on shifting value in the economy towards sustainability
29/09/2020 Duration: 11minThis insight episode is taken from episode 42 where Courtney and Michael talk with Joseph Ament, an ecological economist at the University of Vermont. In the full episode we discuss Joe’s research on money, common money misconceptions, the role of money right now during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this insight episode, we highlight Joe’s thoughts on shifting value towards sustainability in our economy and changing the goal of the monetary system to resiliency. If you are interested to learn more about Joe’s work, here are a couple recent publications:Paper by Joe on Ecological Monetary Theory: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/3/923Article by Joe for Uneven Earth on the monetary system and the Green New Deal: http://unevenearth.org/2020/01/public-money-for-environmental-justice/Finding Sustainability Podcast@find_sust_podhttps://twitter.com/find_sust_pod Environmental Social Science Networkhttps://essnetwork.net/https://twitter.com/ESS_Network@ESS_Network
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Insight #17: Raul Pacheco-Vega on ethnography and the ethics of care
25/09/2020 Duration: 06minThis insight episode is taken from episode 039, where Michael and I talk with Raul Pacheco-Vega. Raul is a professor in the Public Administration Division of the Centre for Economic Research and Teaching, CIDE (Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, CIDE, AC) based out of CIDE Region Centro in Aguascalientes, Mexico. In the full podcast (episode 039) we discussed his work on waste and waste pickers, wastewater, and bottled water as un-traditional commons. We also spoke about the importance of making care work and life support systems visible under the Covid pandemic. In this insight we highlight his thoughts on the value of ethnography as a methodology to understand those issues. Raul's personal website: http://www.raulpacheco.org/blog/ https://twitter.com/raulpacheco?lang=en Finding Sustainability Podcast @find_sust_pod https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod Environmental Social Science Network https://essnetwork.net/ https://twitter.com/ESS_Network @ESS_Network
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054: Transboundary actions with Mike Schoon
17/09/2020 Duration: 01h34minIn this episode Michael and Stefan spoke with Mike Schoon, an associate professor in Arizona State University's School of Sustainability. They began by discussing Mike's previous career as an engineer and his PhD dissertation work on transboundary parks in Southern Africa, which he conducted while he was a PhD student at Indiana University, where he and Michael met as advisees of Lin Ostrom. They also talked about Mike's work on wildlife management in Arizona and the role he has played in the research communities on the Commons, as the co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of the Commons, and Resilience, where he also plays a significant leadership role.
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053: Multiple methods for exploring the commons with Jacopo Baggio
07/09/2020 Duration: 01h27minIn this episode Michael and Courtney spoke with Jacopo Baggio, an assistant professor at the School of of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida. Michael and Courtney spoke with Jacopo about his career path and his work examining the validity of Elinor Ostrom's design principles for long-lasting community-base resource management, as well as his more recent work exploring the role that cognitive diversity plays in the abilities of groups to produce shared public goods. A common theme throughout the conversation was the importance of adapting methods to research questions, rather than the other way 'round. Jacopo's website: https://sciences.ucf.edu/politics/person/jacopo-baggio/ References for Jacopo's papers on cognitive diversity: Baggio, J. A., Freeman, J., Coyle, T. R., Nguyen, T. T., Hancock, D., Elpers, K. E., ... & Pillow, D. (2019). The importance of cognitive diversity for sustaining the commons. Nature communications, 10(1), 1-11. Freeman, J., Baggio,
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052: Seafood trade accounting, Covid impacts, and resilient food systems with Jessica Gephart
31/08/2020 Duration: 01h10minIn this episode Michael and Stefan spoke with Jessica Gephart, an assistant professor of environmental science at American University. Jessica's research focuses on the feedbacks between globalized food systems and the environment, with an emphasis on seafood systems. Jessica, Stefan and Michael spoke about work she has done in trying to improve our accounting of seafood trade flows in order to better understand just where our seafood is going to and coming from, and why this is important to understand from an environmental sustainability perspective. They also talked about more recent work that Jessica has been doing to examine the impacts of the COVID pandemic on the seafood sector, and her professional identity as an interdisciplinary scholar focusing on applied social-ecological challenges. Jessica's website: http://www.jessicagephart.com/Paper from PNAS that is discussed: Gephart, Jessica A., Halley E. Froehlich, and Trevor A. Branch. 2019. “Opinion: To Create Sustainable Seafood Industries, the United S
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Insight #16: Liana Chua on the risk of interdisciplinarity
24/08/2020 Duration: 08minThis insight episode is taken from full episode 036 of the podcast with Liana Chua. Liana is a social anthropologist at Brunel University London with long-term ethnographic interests in Borneo, ethnic politics, development, more-than-human landscapes, visuality, and materiality. Her current research revolves around the social, political, aesthetic, and affective dimensions of the global nexus of orangutan conservation. She received her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, her MPhil in Social Anthropological Analysis from the University of Cambridge, and her BA in Modern History from the University of Oxford. Liana’s university page: https://www.brunel.ac.uk/people/liana-chua Liana’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/liana_chua?lang=en Finding Sustainability Podcast @find_sust_pod https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod Environmental Social Science Network https://essnetwork.net/ https://twitter.com/ESS_Network @ESS_Network
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051: Conservation modelling with Beatriz Dos Santos Dias
17/08/2020 Duration: 01h06minIn this episode, Michael spoke with Beatriz Dos Santos Dias. Beatriz is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington. She is a part of the project Modelling and Stock Assessment of Prince William Sound Herring (in the Gulf of Alaska), and as part of her research, she is investigating the drivers of herring spawn timing to improve our knowledge about the population and its stock assessment models. Michael and Bia spoke about her experiences leading up to and including her PhD work at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and her current project.Link to Bia's paper that is discussed, "Opening the tap: Increased riverine connectivity strengthens marine food web pathways":https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0217008
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050: Social impacts of marine conservation with David Gill
11/08/2020 Duration: 49minIn this episode Michael spoke with David Gill, an assistant professor at Duke University's Marine lab within the Nicholas School of the Environment. David and Michael spoke about David's past experiences in the NGO sector, his postdoc experiences through the Smith Fellowship and at the National Social-Ecological Synthesis Center (SESYNC), and his more recent research at Duke on the heterogeneous impacts that marine conservation initiatives have on local groups. David's website: https://nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/gillPaper on conservation impacts that David and Michael discuss: Gill, David A., Samantha H. Cheng, Louise Glew, Ernest Aigner, Nathan J. Bennett, and Michael B. Mascia. 2019. Social Synergies, Tradeoffs, and Equity in Marine Conservation Impacts. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 44:347-372.
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049: Sharing podcasting experiences with Coastal Routes Radio
03/08/2020 Duration: 01h24minIn this episode the whole FS team spoke with another group of podcasters from the Coastal Routes project (https://coastalroutes.org/). Together, Phil Loring, Hannah Harrison and Emily De Sousa run the Coastal Routes Radio “Social FISHtancing” pocast about Fisheries and COVID-19. They also produce "Pubcasts": abridged and annotated versions of scientific publications read by the authors. Each group discussed how their project got started, their process for creating episodes, how their podcasting fits into their broader professional lives, and the impacts that the project has had on the team members. Check them out!
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Insight #15: Steven Alexander on qualitative data sharing
27/07/2020 Duration: 18minThis insight clip is taken from episode 029, Stefan and Michael's interview with Steven Alexander. Steven is a Science Advisor based at Fisheries and Oceans Canada and holds an appointment as Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo. Steven began working at the science-policy interface as a Mitacs Canadian Science Policy Fellow. Prior to this he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow affiliated with both the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center in the US and the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden. He calls himself an environmental social scientist, and his research focuses on community-based conservation and natural resource management, environmental governance, and the human dimensions of environmental change. Steven’s Google Scholar https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=naPWaUwAAAAJ&hl=en Steven’s twitter https://twitter.com/salexander_11?lang=en Steven’s ResearchGate profile https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steven_Alexander2 Qualitative
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048: Indonesian science and the sociology of disaster risk reduction with Irina Rafliana
20/07/2020 Duration: 51minIn this episode, Stefan interviews Irina Rafliana. Irina is a science communication officer at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), and is also currently a PhD candidate at the German Development Institute in Bonn, Germany. Irina’s research is focused on disaster sociology, where she is examining the social construction of knowledge and technology in the implementation of a tsunami warning system in Indonesia aided by German partners. Irina has extensive experience working within the Indonesian science system, but also internationally. In the podcast we discuss disaster risk in Indonesia around earthquakes and tsunamis, and the challenges surrounding the implementation of a tsunami warning system. Irina is studying the sociology of this process, how knowledge is constructed among the individual and organization involved, as well as the challenges with communicating this knowledge with local communities in Indonesia. Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) http://lipi.go.id/ Germany Development Institu
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047: Split incentives, Rentlab and moving from government to the private sector with Jacqui Bauer
13/07/2020 Duration: 01h07minIn this episode Michael spoke with Jacqui Bauer. Jacqui is the founder and CEO of Rentlab (https://www.rentlab.org/), an organization that works with cities to address the "split incentive problem" created by dividing the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords with respect to rental property. Michael and Jacqui discussed this project and Jacqui's previous work that led up to it, particularly her position as the sustainability director for the city of Bloomington, Indiana. Not coincidentally, Bloomington is where Michael attended Indiana University for graduate school. They talked a bit about their time there, as well as about their thoughts on the public vs. private sectors and how academia relates to each. Finally, since the topic of the best pizza (at least in Bloomington and maybe the world) didn't come up, here is the website for Mother Bear's pizza: https://motherbearspizza.com/
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046: The sociology of science and interdisciplinarity with John Parker
05/07/2020 Duration: 01h05minIn this episode Michael spoke with John Parker. John is sociologist of science and a program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) within its division of social and economic sciences. John and Michael spoke about John's experience at the NSF and the importance of mentorship and accumulative advantage in science, which challenge the way we think about "who is good" in a field, and how we judge this as a forced decision. John also discussed his work on "coherent groups" such as the Resilience Alliance (https://www.resalliance.org/), which he has studied at length. Finally, John and Michael discussed the too-often invisible work done by many people to support the outcomes that a much smaller number of individuals receive credit for. The implications of this work are far-reaching for all scientists as we struggle with the challenges of self-reinforcing power and privilege, increasing inequalities, and the collective-action problems we face when we try to produce public goods. John's website and google
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045: Finding our niche and the importance of threshold concepts with Phil Loring
29/06/2020 Duration: 01h10minIn this episode, Michael spoke with Phil Loring. Phil is an associate professor in the geography department at the University of Guelph, as well as the Arrell Chair in Food, Policy and Society at the Arrell Food Institute, also at the University of Guelph. Michael and Phil discussed several projects that Phil is working on, including on upcoming book, Finding Our Niche, the importance of threshold concepts in sustainability studies, and Coastal Routes Radio, a collaborative podcast that Phil is leading along with others in his group. In a future episode of FS, we will speak again with Phil and the rest of the Coast Routes team!Show notes: Phil's website: http://www.conservationofchange.org/phil-loring Twitter handle: @conservechange Phil's paper on thresholds: https://www.facetsjournal.com/doi/10.1139/facets-2019-0037 Coastal Routes radio website: https://coastalroutes.org/ You can find information on Phil's upcoming book here: https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/finding-our-niche
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Insight #14: Fiona Nunan on institutional analysis
15/06/2020 Duration: 09minThis insight episode is taken from episode 028 of the podcast, Stefan and Michael's interview with Fiona Nunan. Fiona Nunan is a Professor of Environment and Development within the International Development Department at the University of Birmingham in the UK. https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/gov/nunan-fiona.aspx#staffdetails https://twitter.com/fionanunan?lang=en Her interests and experience focus on natural resource governance and management in developing country settings, particularly within inland fisheries and coastal locations in East and Southern Africa, and on exploring the links between poverty and the environment. She was appointed to Head of the department in 2014 and was previously the Director of Postgraduate Research. She leads on the new Environment, Sustainability and Politics pathway of the MSc program, and works closely with colleagues in the Political Science and International Studies Department. Fiona’s Google Scholar page https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=gjUJQYcAAAAJ&am
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044: Policy processes and advocacy coalitions with Chris Weible
09/06/2020 Duration: 01h09minMichael spoke with Chris Weible, a professor at the school of public affairs, University of Colorado, Denver. Chris is also the director of his school's PhD program, and a co-director with Tanya Heikkila of the Workshop on Policy Process Research (WOPPR). Chris is a leading figure on the field of policy studies, and Michael and Chris discussed the use of a popular policy process tool, the advocacy coalition framework, as well is Chris' developing interdisciplinary work on the role of emotions and interpretivist perspectives in policy process studies. Chris' website: https://publicaffairs.ucdenver.edu/programs/public-affairs-programs/phd-in-public-affairs/christopher-weible-ucd189 WOPPR website: https://publicaffairs.ucdenver.edu/research-and-impact/workshop-on-policy-process-research Paper that Chris mentions towards the end of the interview: Durnová, A. P., and C. M. Weible. 2020. Tempest in a teapot? Toward new collaborations between mainstream policy process studies and interpretive policy studies. Policy
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043: Team science in academia and resource management practice with Kenneth Wallen
05/06/2020 Duration: 57minIn this episode, Stefan Partelow interviews Kenny Wallen. Kenny is an Assistant Professor of Human Dimensions of Fish and Wildlife at the University of Idaho. His professorship is a joint position with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, so Kenny has one foot in academia and one in practice. He received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources; his M.S. at Oklahoma State University in Zoology; B.A. at Truman State University in Psychology. https://www.human-element-lab.com/ Kenny’s Google Scholar page https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=XT-t5bgAAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao Kenny’s university page https://www.uidaho.edu/cnr/faculty/wallen Research articles mentioned: Wallen, K. E. & Romulo, C. L. Social norms: More details, please. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 114, E5283–E5284 (2017). https://www.pnas.org/content/114/27/E5283 Wallen, K. E. et al. Integrating team science into interdisciplinary graduate education: an exploration of the SESYNC Graduat
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042: Rethinking the monetary system for social and ecological equity with Joseph Ament
01/06/2020 Duration: 54minIn this episode, Courtney and Michael interview Joe Ament. Joe completed his PhD at the University of Vermont where he researched monetary theory and policy in the context of social and ecological equity. His work currently looks at public banking at the national and local levels as well as central banking policy for combating climate change and income inequality. In this conversation with Joe, we go deep into the concept of money to think about common money misconceptions, the role of money right now during the COVID-19 pandemic and current economic crisis and finally why it's so critical to think about the monetary system to design a just and sustainable future. If you are interested to learn more about Joe’s work, here are a couple recent publications: Paper on Ecological Monetary Theory: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/3/923 Uneven Earth Article on the monetary system and the Green New Deal: http://unevenearth.org/2020/01/public-money-for-environmental-justice/ Finding Sustainability Podcast @find_s
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041: Antarctic marine conservation with Cassandra Brooks
25/05/2020 Duration: 01h07sMichael and Courtney interview Cassandra Brooks, an assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. We talked about her path from rural New Hampshire to Maine and later on to California, and most of all her transdisciplinary involvement in the development of marine protection in the seas around Antarctica. Cassandra discussed her initial exposure to this space, what drew her to it, and how she and her colleagues have worked to establish marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean. Cassandra's website: https://www.colorado.edu/envs/cassandra-brooks A recent paper by Cassandra and colleagues on the policy development process in the Antarctic: Brooks, C. M., L. B. Crowder, H. Österblom, and A. L. Strong. 2020. Reaching consensus for conserving the global commons: The case of the Ross Sea, Antarctica. Conservation Letters 13(1):289. Cassandra's famous youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNZu1uxNvlo
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040: Amplification processes and incorporating local knowledge in sustainability research with David Lam
18/05/2020 Duration: 44minIn this episode, Stefan Partelow interviews David Lam. David is a PhD candidate at Leuphana University in Germany. His research focuses on the transferability and scalability of the transformational impact of sustainability initiatives. Before starting his PhD, David Lam studied Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science at Lund University and worked for three years as a corporate responsibility consultant for companies, federal ministries, and NGOs. https://www.leuphana.de/en/institutes/ietsr/staff/david-lam.html In the podcast we talk about a few different papers (links below) comprising David’s PhD research and thesis. This includes how sustainability transformations are fostered by local actors, but also how understandings of sustainability differs between actors. We also discuss a recent paper led by David on applications processes in the sustainability transformations literature. David has also conducted a review of local and indigensous knowledge, which leads us to discussion on plurality and the