Environmental Humanities | Ecocriticism | Environmental Justice
President’s Professor of English and Environmental Humanities | Arizona State University | USA
Director, Environmental Humanities Initiative | Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability | ASU
Joni Adamson is President’s Professor of Environmental Humanities in the Department of English, Distinguished Global Futures Scholar at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, and Founding Director of the Flagship Hub of UNESCO BRIDGES Sustainability Science Coalition which is located in the Rob and Melani Walton Center for Planetary Heath. Her research interests include environmental justice, the centrality of the environmental humanities to the sustainability sciences, the design of desirable futures, Indigenous literatures and scientific literacies, the rights of nature movement, and the food justice movement. Dr. Adamson is the author and/or co–editor of nine books and special issues and 90 articles, chapters, reviews, and blog posts. She received her PhD in English and Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies from the University of Arizona.
Representation and Cultural Heritage | Food Studies | Museum Studies | Mexico
Lecturer | Department of Anthropology | University of Texas at Austin | USA
Administrative Program Coordinator | Humanities Institute
Historical Ecology | Sustainability Science | Storytelling | Literary Activism | Literary and Cultural Reception Studies
Founding Executive Director | BRIDGES Sustainability Science Coalition
UNESCO Management of Social Formations | Global Futures Laboratory | Arizona State University | USA
Steven Hartman is the Founding Executive Director of the humanities-led BRIDGES Sustainability Science Coalition organized within UNESCO’s international science program Management of Social Transformations (MOST), based at the Flagship Hub of the BRIDGES Coalition in Arizona State University’s Global Futures Laboratory. He is also Visiting Professor in the Faculty of History and Philosophy at University of Iceland, the co-editor-in-chief of the international peer-reviewed journal Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities, and series editor of Global Challenges in Environmental Humanities (Bloomsbury Academic), and has led international projects and transdisciplinary team-driven initiatives supported by Nordforsk, the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, the EEA & Norway Grants fund and the U.S. National Science Foundation. Hartman is particularly interested in historical ecology, sustainability science, storytelling, literary activism, and literary and cultural reception studies.
Administrative Law | Environmental Law | Social, Environmental Climate & Inter-Species Justice
Associate Professor | Department of Public Law | University of Pretoria | South Africa
Melanie Murcott is an Associate Professor in the University of Pretoria’s Department of Public Law. Her research interests include how the law can law can advance social, environmental, climate, and inter-species justice as interconnected concerns and the potential of environmental law and administrative law to contribute towards South Africa’s project of transformative constitutionalism. Her recent publications include “What the ECtHR Could Learn from Courts in the Global South” in Verfassungsblog (2022) on Comparative Climate Litigation in North-South Perspective (with Dr Maria Antonia Tigre and Dr Nessa Zimmermann), “Innovative Regulation of Meat Consumption in South Africa: An Environmental Rights Perspective” (2021) Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal 24 1-47 (with Tokyo Ndlela), and “Litigation and regulatory governance in the age of the Anthropocene: the case of fracking in the Karoo” (2020) Transnational Legal Theory 11(1-2) 144 (with Dr Emily Webster). Dr. Murcott received a Doctor of Laws (LLD) from North-West University.
International Law | Policy Communications | Literary and Cultural Studies
Associate Professor | Interdisciplinary Studies | Technical University of Kenya
George Odera-Outa is an Associate Professor (Interdisciplinary Studies) at the
Technical University of Kenya(TUK) since April, 2021. Law graduate of the
University of London (UK) and the University of California-Hastings (USA);
previously a ‘Tothil Prestige Scholar’ at the University of the Witwatersrand,
(South Africa). Is a ‘multi-discipline’ scholar and practitioner (Literary Studies;
International Law and Communication). Writer and author (three full book
length publications and various peer reviewed publications). Recipient of
prestigious awards, among them, the St Andrews (UK) Prize for the Environment
(2001) and the Governance in East Africa Research Awards (1993). Previously
based at the Institute for Climate Change and Adaptation, University of Nairobi.
Has been a University Lecturer since September 1988 (College of Humanities and
Social Sciences; College of Education and External Studies and College of
Biological and Physical Sciences). Has combined academia with active public
service under various advisory and consulting modalities, especially under UNDP.
Has been UoN Coordinator for the ‘Transforming Social Inequalities Through
Inclusive Climate Action (TSITICA) project under the African Research University
Alliance (ARUA) activities, including as convenor of the ‘Nationally Determined
Contributions (NDCs) Research Group. Institutional Coordinator and Co-PI for
NOHRED II (Capacity Building for Socially Just Energy Transitions in Eastern
Africa) project. Affiliated researcher for the ‘Environment and Climate
Diplomacy’ project under the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)- Africa
Centre, Nairobi.
African Literature | Popular Culture and Memory | Southern African Philosophy
Director | Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship | University of Pretoria | South Africa
James Ogude is the Director at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria as well as the Director of the Centre’s African Observatory for Environmental Humanities. Until his appointment to the Centre, he was a Professor of African Literature and Cultures in the School of Literature, Language and Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is the author of Ngugi’s Novels and African History: Narrating the Nation (1999) and has edited a total of eight books and one anthology of African stories. His most recent edited books are: Ubuntu and Personhood (2018); Ubuntu and the Everyday (co-edited with Uni Dyer, 2019); Ubuntu and the Reconstitution of Community (2019). Dr. Ogude received a PhD in African Literature from the University of Witwatersrand.
African History | Environmental History | Extractive Industries
Assistant Professor of Contemporary History | University of Groningen | The Netherlands
Iva Pesa is an Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Groningen. Her research interests include African history and environmental, social, and oral histories. She is the coordinator of the MA History specialization “Un/sustainable societies in past, present, and future.” Dr. Pesa received her PhD from Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Classical Archeology | Field Archeology | Cultural Interaction and Culture Change
Associate Professor | Classics | University of Texas at Austin | USA
Adam Rabinowitz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Classics and Assistant Director of the Institute of Classical Archaeology at The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include Greek colonization, cultural interaction, ancient food and drink, archaeology of daily life, and digital approaches to archaeology. His publications include titles like “The Work of Archaeology in the Age of Digital Surrogacy” and “Drinkers, hosts, or fighters? Masculine identities in pre-Classical Crete.” Dr. Rabinowitz received his PhD from the Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Michigan, where he wrote a dissertation on the role of communal wine-drinking in political and social interactions in the colonial Greek world.
American Culture and Cultural Theory | Production of Knowledge | Cultural Politics
Professor of English | Director, The Humanities Center | Carnegie Mellon University | USA
David Shumway is a Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University’s Dietrich College of Humanites and Social Sciences as well as the Director of the Literary and Cultural Studies Program. His research interests relate to American cultural elements such film, popular music, and late nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction. He also researches cultural theory, including the historical and institutional production of knowledge, cultural politics, and theories of identity. His publications include “Rock Stars as Icons,” “Criticism and Critique: A Genealogy,” and “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: Utopia, Avatar, and the Loss of Progressive Metanarrative.” Dr. Shumway received his PhD from Indiana University.
