Faculty Accomplishments

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has coauthored an article titled "Tactical Opposition: Obstructing Loss and Damage Finance in the United Nations Climate Negotiations." Appearing in the journal Global Environmental Politics, the article uncovers four periods of obstruction and outlines a typology of 14 tactics countries have used to delay progress. These tactics have limited the issue’s scope, reduced transparency, manipulated language, and advanced non-transformative solutions. The article's findings contribute to the study of obstructionism in climate governance and can help loss and damage advocates better anticipate and respond to these tactics in future climate negotiations.

Professor of Art Véronique Plesch is coeditor of the newly released book Water and Sea in Word and Image / L’Eau et la mer dans les textes et les images (Brill, 2023), a selection of papers drawn from the 2021 International Association of Word and Image Studies conference. Plesch also contributed a paper to the book, “The River of Life: Drawing Lessons from Thomas Cole in Images and Words” (pages 128–143). Summer research assistants Ari Trueba '23 and Lydia Burke '24 helped Plesch with preparation of the book's text, and the design for the book's cover is based on a template created by Rachel Tobie '04.

The Society for Organic Petrology has awarded its Ralph Gray Award for best refereed paper in organic petrology for 2022 to Robert A. Gastaldo, the Whipple-Coddington Professor of Geology, Emeritus, and Ian Glasspool, a research scientist in Colby's Geology Department. The award acknowledges the geologists' paper "Silurian wildfire proxies and atmospheric oxygen,” which was published in the journal Geology and garnered BBC and international attention. The paper discusses the geologists' research that concludes the earliest wildfires began burning about 430 million years ago, or 10 million years earlier than previously known. A formal award presentation will be held Sept. 19, 2023, at the University of Patras, Rio-Patras, Greece, where the society's annual meeting takes place.    

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson was invited to speak at a panel event on innovative finance for loss and damage at the International Peace Institute (IPI), a think tank based at the United Nations. Chaired by IPI President and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights H. E. Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, panelists discussed the deficiencies and shortfalls in loss and damage finance, and they underscored innovative ways to capitalize on the new fund, including taxes and levies. Robinson, in contextualizing the perspective of small island developing states, emphasized that loss and damage is about people and their livelihoods: “People matter, and we need to center equity and justice.” The event was attended by senior officials from across the United Nations system, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Associate Professor of Astronomy Dale Kocevski was the lead author in an article recently published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters titled "Hidden Little Monsters: Spectroscopic Identification of Low-Mass, Broad-Line AGN at z>5 with CEERS." Using the James Webb Space Telescope, Kocevski and an international team of researchers identified two low-luminosity black holes using JWST NIRSpec spectroscopy from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey. “Our findings show that growing black holes in infant galaxies are very common in the early universe,” said Kocevski. “This was something that we did not expect to detect with our observations. We knew lower-mass black holes had to exist in early galaxies, but we didn’t think we could find them.”

Assistant Professor of Geology Bess Koffman was the lead author of an article published in the April 2023 issue of Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology. Her paper, which was featured on the cover of the journal and is titled "Abrupt Changes in Atmospheric Circulation During the Medieval Climate Anomaly and Little Ice Age Recorded by Sr-Nd Isotopes in the Siple Dome Ice Core, Antarctica," uses geochemical data from the Siple Dome ice core in Antarctica to explore past changes in wind patterns around Antarctica. The data show that the predominant circulation system of the Southern Hemisphere, the mid-latitude westerly winds, shifted abruptly during a past warm-climate interval, suggesting that they may be capable of similar changes under today's climate conditions.

Professor of Art Véronique Plesch wrote the introduction to the summer issue of the Maine Arts Journal as well as her "Art Historical Musings" column with an essay titled "A Balancing Art." For this issue, the MAJ joined forces with the L.C. Bates Museum and their summer show, which was curated by Anna Jaubert '25 and Zehra Gundogdu '26 and supervised by Plesch (the virtual show can be seen here). The L.C. Bates summer show, the MAJ, and a forthcoming show at the Portland Gallery of the Union of Maine Visual Artists are all on the same topic of In Balance/Imbalance. Assistant Professor of Printmaking Amanda Lilleston is featured both in the L.C. Bates show and the summer issue of the MAJ.

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has coauthored an article titled "Locally led adaptation: Promise, pitfalls, and possibilities." Appearing in the journal Ambio, the article offers a nuanced understanding of the power and justice considerations required to make climate change adaptation useful for local communities and institutions, and to resolve the tensions between locally led adaptation and other development priorities. It also contributes to a further refinement of locally led adaptation methodologies and practices to better realize its promises.

On June 15, 2023, Professor of Art Véronique Plesch delivered a lecture (via Zoom) titled “Iconographie de la haine: Défense et illustration du corpus iconographique” at the conference Expressions Artistique et Diversité Religieuse: Déconstruire les Figures de la Haine, organized by the Faculté des Sciences Juridiques, Économiques et Sociales Agda (Université Mohammed V, Rabat) and the International Association Overcoming Hate/Vaincre la haine, along with Essaouira Mogador, Bayt Dakira, Agence Marocaine d’Évaluation des Politiques Publiques, Centre d’Études et de Recherche sur le Droit Hébraïque, Chaire de Droit Hébraïque, and the Fondation Konrad-Adenauer Maroc, in Rabat, Morocco. Plesch is member of the scientific council of Vaincre la Haine, a French association (Law 1901) whose aim is "to fight racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Muslim hatred; defend their victims and publicly plead for understanding of the problem and its consequences."