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Current Scholar Biographies
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Peter S. Alagona, PhD
Office: 650.725.6485
Visiting Assistant Professsor—Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University (2008—2009)
Harvard Environmental Fellow—Center for the Environment, Harvard University (2006—2008)
PhD, History—University of California, Los Angeles (2006)
MA, History—University of California, Los Angeles (2003)
MA, Geography—University of California, Santa Barbara (2000)
BA, History—Northwestern University (1995)
Teaching
I have taught a wide range of courses in history, geography, and environmental studies—from Atmospheric Science to The Idea of Nature to Colonial Latin America. For six summers, Gregory Simon and I co—taught an environmental studies field course in the Sierra Nevada of eastern California. The course, entitled Wilderness and Society: The High Sierra Project, was offered through the Wildlands Studies Program now housed at Cal State, Monterey Bay. Teaching this course was one of my most rewarding professional experiences, and my time in the mountains has left me with an abiding belief in the power of experiential education. During the winter of 2009, I will teach an undergraduate seminar course at Stanford on Endangered Species.
Research
My research focuses on the politics of nature:
Why do people fight over access to land and natural resources? How have debates about "the environment" become framed in popular culture? What roles have science and technology played in environmental politics? How have environmental debates reflected changing social relationships and power structures? How have institutions mediated people's relationships with nature and with each other? How have non—human actors, such as plants and animals, participated in cultural conversations about how to live right on the land?
I am also interested in environmental theory and historical methodology. This includes big questions, such as: How can we understand the relative forces of change and stability in environmental history? It also includes smaller, more specific questions, such as: What role can field study play in humanistic environmental education?
Most of my work has focused on the histories of endangered species and biological diversity in California. I have also written about range management, natural disasters, environmental education, community—based conservation, and the politics of science. In each of these projects, I have sought to produce compelling interdisciplinary research that promotes both environmental protection and social justice.
My current major project is a history of endangered species conservation in California, entitled The Great Endangered Species Debate: An Environmental History in California and Beyond. This project, which draws from my dissertation research, will offer one of the first attempts by a historian to explain the endangered species conservation crisis that reverberated through American environmental politics during the second half of the twentieth century. Authors who have written about the history of endangered species conservation in the United States have tended to produce narratives either of ecological decline (bad) or ethical awakening (good). I tell a grittier and more ambiguous tale. This is a story not just about how people have treated other species, but also about how they have treated each other. We should understand the history of American endangered species conservation as part of a much larger struggle over access to land and natural resources, and as a fundamental debate about the meaning and purpose of conservation itself.
In the future, I plan to continue my work on the histories of environmental politics, ecological science, and biodiversity conservation. In the fall of 2009, I will begin a faculty position at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I will teach courses in history and environmental studies. I will also begin two new major projects. The first will be book on the international trade in protected species of flora and fauna—the world's third largest illicit trafficking industry after weapons and narcotics. The second will be a collaborative, interdisciplinary history of the University of California's Natural Reserve System, and its role in California environmental science and politics since Joseph Grinnell founded the first UC reserve in the 1930s.
Gregory Simon, PhD
Office: 650.721.2649
Postdoctoral Fellow—Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University (2007—2009)
Ph.D. Geography (2007) University of Washington
Topics of study:
Sustainability * Political Ecology * Urban Ecology * Environmental Justice * Natural Resource Management * Environmental History * Globalization and Free Trade * Science and Technology Studies * Political Economy of Development * North American West * Cultural Ecology * South Asia
Teaching
My pedagogy is based on four principal philosophies: interdisciplinary perspectives, emphasizing epistemological, theoretical and analytical pluralism as well as critical and normative approaches to learning; hands—on, participatory approaches to instruction that engage students' creativity and originality; intercultural studies, with a keen interest in cultural difference and issues of social justice; and praxis—oriented instruction that builds core reading, writing, speaking, community service and leadership skills. I am a firm believer in field—based education, and have taught extensively in non—classroom environments in the Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay Area and Sierra Nevada. Currently I teach classes on ‘Free trade, NAFTA and the environment', and ‘Urban ecology, politics and history of the Bay Area'.
Research
My research falls under the academic tradition of ‘Environment and Development'. I am interested in how environmental resources are planned, managed and experienced by policy makers, community interests and natural resource managers amidst conditions of rapid urbanization, economic reforms, and market expansion. My research is interdisciplinary and is informed by fields ranging from political ecology and development studies, to environmental history and urban ecology. I am particularly concerned with: environmental protection under conditions of economic growth; democratization and the confluence of formal and informal spheres of environmental governance; problems and challenges associated with managing urban environments; the social and environmental consequences of privatizing natural resource management programs; scientific uncertainty and its influence on environmental decision making; sustainability and interdisciplinary studies as tools for understanding and achieving ecological vitality and social justice.
Currently I have three ongoing research areas focusing on Urban Environments, the American West and South Asia:
1) Urban Environmental Management and Political Ecologies.
As a National Science Foundation Interdisciplinary Fellow in Urban Ecology at the University of Washington, I examined a century of urbanization, and natural resource management in the Seattle metropolitan area. This work (published in Urban Ecosystems) details how evolving institutional framings of nature, periodic city growth initiatives, and a shifting sphere of political actors has shaped the goals and outcomes of park and open space management policies.
A) How and why do suburbs that are vulnerable to wildfires develop and redevelop?
I have a deep interest in the ecological and social dimensions of urban wildfires. As a post—doctoral fellow at Stanford University I am working on a project exploring the history and political economy of the 1991 Oakland Hills Firestorm in the San Francisco Bay Area. Using a variety of spatial and historical data sources, this research reconstructs the story of the firestorm as more than a single event of tragedy, loss and heroism, and instead as part of a larger process of pre and post firestorm economic development, suburban sprawl, environmental management and community planning policies in the East Bay Hills.
Above all else, this project explores how and why the hillside community developed despite substantial evidence indicating its vulnerability to fire, and also how and why the region has transformed post—disaster into an exclusive Bay Area community.
Funding: Stanford University Bill Lane Center Postdoctoral Scholarship Stanford University Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Departmental Grant for Undergraduate Education
B) What are the implications of rapid urbanization on the supply and quality of water in U.S. and Indian cities?
This interdisciplinary research project addresses the process of urbanization in both the United States and India seeking to understand the spatial and temporal impacts of different forms of urban development on water supply and quality. As part of this project we are interested in examining the emergent relationship between urban ecological systems and governance reforms in Indian and US contexts. In an initial research phase, we are exploring the similarities and differences in the way Indian and U.S. scientists define and conduct urban and political ecology research. Our research collaboration is investigating ecologically resilient and socially equitable water systems in rapidly urbanizing cities that best leverages our access to data resources, field sites and intellectual infrastructure. One of the goals is to develop curricular opportunities for integrating international dimensions of urban and political ecology in higher education.
Project title: "U.S.——India Joint Workshop: Coupled Human—Natural Systems and the Challenge of Rapid Urbanization to the Resiliency of Water Resources" Funding 2008—2009. National Science Foundation. Project # 0837950 ($49,313)
C) How do cities preserve open space as they develop outwards and subsequently infill?
As a National Science Foundation Interdisciplinary Fellow in Urban Ecology at the University of Washington, I examined a century of urbanization and natural resource management in the Seattle metropolitan area. This work details how evolving institutional perspectives on the value of nature, periodic city growth initiatives, and a shifting sphere of political actors has shaped the goals and outcomes of park and open space management policies.
Manuscript title: 2006. "Place—Based Urban Ecology: A Century of Park Planning in Seattle." Co—authored with S. Dooling, K. Yocom, Urban Ecosystems 9: 4 pp. 299—321 Funding National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Fellowship
2) Environmental Policy and Development in the American West.
A) Is it actually possible to 'leave no trace'?
The American West is notable for its extensive network of public lands.
One the most influential guidelines shaping visitor behavior and informing management policies on Federal lands are the seven 'Leave No Trace' Principles. My co—author and I argue that these principles, while well intentioned and remarkably effective in minimizing backcountry impacts, rely on an outdated conception of 'trace' that is a—historical, anti—spatial and inconsistent with a modern environmental ethical code emphasizing individual responsibility, and the connection between spaces of production and consumption. The backcountry experience can no longer be separated from the vast recreational industry that makes such visitation possible. We go beyond leveling a philisophico—cultural critique, by engaging policy and offering a set of complementary 'Leave No Trace' Principles suggesting that 'the wilderness experience starts at home'.
Manuscript title (In review) "Beyond Leave No Trace"
B) How is scientific uncertainty in recycled water programs produced and how does it influence policy?
As a post—doctoral fellow at Stanford, I am participating in a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project examining water recycling programs for agricultural irrigation and ecosystem services in the US West. Dramatic population growth, depleted aquifers, and great uncertainty about future precipitation levels are forcing water managers to radically alter how they use their supplies of freshwater. Water districts in California have been at the vanguard of reclaimed, or "recycled," water use. Based on at least four cases studies from Northern California, this project will examine how scientific uncertainty, economic incentive, community politics and regulatory pressures converge to influence decisions to implement water—recycling projects.
Project title: "Decision making in Recycled—Water Project Implementation: Symmetry in Scientific Knowledge and Political Economy" Funding 2008—2010. Stanford University Woods Institute Environmental Ventures Program Research Grant ($199,587)
C) What happens when abstract ecological boundaries like the 100th meridian are used to inform natural resource policy?
The process of treating investigative and abstract representations of ecological discontinuities as if they were tangible and authentic reflections of reality represents a process of reification and may lead to policy provisions with adverse local ecological and social consequences.
The United States Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program is used to illustrate how resource management rules are constructed around approximated boundaries. Conservation Reserve Policies take the 100th meridian - a simplified representation of the ambiguous gradient between the non—arid east and the arid west - and harden it into a concrete boundary where farmers follow different rules depending on what side of the boundary they reside.
Manuscript title: (In review) "The 100th meridian, Conservation Reserve Programs and the problem of reification"
(3) Rural development, economic reforms and environmental management in South Asia
A) What role do intermediaries play in market—based rural development programs in India? Through extensive field work funded by the University of Washington Graduate School and the National Science Foundation, I examine development projects aimed at reducing forest resource consumption, household energy use and improving indoor air pollution in Maharashtra, India.
Currently I am exploring the fate of these projects as they have recently transitioned from a centrally planned, government subsidized framework to one that requires foreign direct investments and market mechanisms to deliver health and environmental benefits to households. I am particularly interested in how market—based development programs are experienced and reworked locally through a process of low—level mediation by community brokers.
This research makes an important contribution to theories in development studies exploring participatory development under conditions of privatization and state disinvestment.
Manuscript title: (In review) "Market Development, Geographies of Mediation and the Rural Broker in Maharashtra, India"
Funding 2005. University of Washington Graduate School Fritz Fellowship for International Study and Exchange, India. "Management of Forests, Fuelwood and Household Pollution Amidst Economic Reforms in India" 2005.
National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship. Disciplinary Research Grant. "Changing Energy Use Patterns and Development in Maharashtra, India." 2004.
National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship. Language Training Grant, India.
2004. University of Washington Rachel Woods Travel Grant, India.
B) Are appropriate technologies an effective means for achieving community based natural resource management?
This research thread explores community based appropriate technology model of development and describes the challenges of maintaining local control over the development process. Three short stories from case sites in southwestern Maharashtra demonstrate how appropriate technologies are made and unmade locally.
For programs distributing smokeless cookstoves, 'the local' is profoundly influenced by numerous scale—crossing developments such as structural economic reforms precipitating international investments in market infrastructure for use by village artisans, and also downward state scientific knowledge transfers influencing decentralized technology production centers. Moreover, village level hierarchies and heterogeneity significantly influence the implementation of community—led programs to develop appropriate cooking technologies. Each case illustrates how the principle parameters of appropriate technologies - local employment generation and cultural, ecological and financial compatibility - are contravened.
Manuscript title (In preparation) "Clearing the Air: Cautionary Tales on Appropriate Technologies as Community Based Indoor Environmental Management Funding — Same as above
Other research interests:
(1) Practicing interdisciplinary education. What are the challenges and benefits of interdisciplinary environmental education? Numerous colleges, programs and departments around the world claim to promote interdisciplinarity through collaborative teaching and research endeavors across disciplines. My research evaluates the process of 'achieving interdisciplinarity' by examining the core challenges and opportunities confronting participants in both campus and field setting.
Manuscript titles
2006. "A Rough Guide to Interdisciplinarity: Graduate Student Perspectives." Co—authored with J. Graybill, S. Dooling, A. Greve, V. Shandas, J. Withey, Bioscience 56: 9 pp. 757—763
(Accepted) "The Role of Field Study in Interdisciplinary Environmental Education" Co—authored with P. Alagona, Journal of Experiential Education (In review) "Geography in Interdisciplinarity: Towards a Third Conversation" Co—authored with J. Graybill Geoforum
Robert Wilson, PhD
Office: 650. 721.2649
Post—Doctoral Scholar—Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University (2008—2009)
Bob Wilson earned his PhD in geography from the University of British Columbia, and is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Syracuse University. During his stay at the Bill Lane Center, Dr. Wilson will be working on a number of projects:
- Completing final edits on Seeking Refuge: An Environmental History of the Pacific Flyway. This book examines the geography and history of wildlife refuges and migratory bird management in the western United States and Canada. Forthcoming from University of Washington Press, Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books Series (William Cronon, ed.).
- Researching and writing articles on what will ultimately be a new, book—length study tentatively titled Landscapes of Promise and Betrayal: A Historical Geography of Japanese—American Internment. While the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the Second World War has received considerable attention from historians and other scholars, few geographers have studied this topic. Neither historians nor geographers have examined some crucial spatial aspects of internment, such as the selection of the campsites, the participation of federal conservation agencies with internment, the spaces of Japanese resistance within the camps, the fate of the camps after the war, and the process of memorialization. While a visiting fellow at the center, he will be doing archival work on this topic at Stanford University and the Bancroft Library, University of California—Berkeley.
- Completing an article on mules as technology in western hard—rock mines during the late—nineteenth and early—twentieth century. This paper answers the call by environmental historian Ed Russell and other scholars to examine domestic animals as a type of bio—technology.
As a geographer, I particularly interested in a number of spatial aspects:
- The degree to which mules were bred or selected for work in these harsh, subterranean environments.
- How mine spaces were shaped to accommodate these animals.
- The mules' role as technology within larger industrial mining systems.
