Faculty Accomplishments

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson and Conall Butchart '22 have coauthored a paper titled "Planning for Climate Change in Small Island Developing States: Can Dominica’s Climate Resilience and Recovery Plan Be a Model for Transformation in the Caribbean?" Published in the journal Sustainability, the paper explores the quality of the plan and finds that, in order for it to be used as a model, other Caribbean jurisdictions would need to extend it by developing mechanisms for equitably sharing any benefits derived from the blue economy, centering Indigenous perspectives in environmental policy- and decision-making, and adequately accounting for exogenous, unexpected risks such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

Paleobotanist Ian Glasspool, a research scientist in the Geology Department, was interviewed for an article titled "Cretaceous Charcoal Gives a Glimpse of Plant Evolution." Glasspool, an authority on fires during the Cretaceous Period, said ancient wildfires “aren’t just localized, destructive, natural events but are also an integral part of the broader Earth system.” Wildfire has a “feedback role in stabilizing the Earth’s atmospheric oxygen concentration” and acts “as a ‘global herbivore’ through its impacts on vegetation," he went on to say.

Assistant Professor of Classics Kassandra Miller has won a fellowship with the Einstein Center Chronoi, an interdisciplinary research cluster in Berlin focused on time-reckoning and temporality. The fellowship will allow Miller to develop her second book project, provisionally titled Untimely Women: Synchronizing Female Bodies in the Ancient Mediterranean. Miller's research focuses on ancient medicine, science, technology, and magic. She will take up residence in Berlin during the summer of 2023 and remain there for the 2023-24 academic year.

Catherine Besteman, the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology, was awarded a $143,000 Sustaining Public Engagement Grant from the ACLS, American Council of Learned Societies. The grant is part of a $3.5-million responsive-funding program made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) initiative. Besteman will use the grant for her Freedom & Captivity Curriculum Project, which will "create curricula based on the materials generated through the Fall 2021 collaborative, statewide public humanities Freedom & Captivity initiative, which explored how to imagine an abolitionist future in Maine," according to the ACLS website.

Charles A. Dana Professor of Education Adam Howard and three of his former students have coauthored a chapter in a book recently released. Their chapter, "Transforming Privilege: The Four R's of Pedagogical Possibilities," appears in the book Paulo Freire and Multilingual Education. Howard's coauthors are Patrick Dickert '18, Wallace Tucker '21, and Sam Jefferson '20.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has been invited to be a panelist at the University of Pennsylvania's 2022 Global Shifts Colloquium on "Islands on the Climate Front Line: Risk and Resilience." The colloquium, held April 20-21, 2022, will explore how islands can address historical, structural, and climate-driven vulnerabilities and what policies can be wrought from their example. Robinson will speak on the intersections of colonialism and climate change.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson's 2020 article on research on climate change adaptation in small island developing states is a top-cited article in WIREs Climate Change for 2020-21. The article explored the shifts in the academic literature before and after the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was released in 2013-14. The article specifically identified shifts in (a) when, where, and by what means knowledge was being produced (e.g., subject areas, methodologies), and the ways in which adaptation was being framed (i.e., conceptually, operationally), (b) the narratives, consensuses, and tensions across the key emerging themes in the literature, and (c) the knowledge gaps that exist. WIREs Climate Change is currently ranked ninth of the 124 ranked environmental studies journals.

Professor of Art Véronique Plesch contributed an essay to the 2022 spring issue of the Maine Arts Journal: UMVA Quarterly titled “Utopia: Retreating, Engaging, and Effecting Change.” Plesch also wrote the introduction to this issue, As Things Fall Apart: Dystopia or Utopia?

Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, the Crawford Family Professor of Religious Studies, has been honored by California's City of Fresno by having March 26 officially declared as Nikky Singh Day. Singh, a scholar of Sikh feminism was invited to deliver the keynote for the Sikh Women's Organization of Central California by Amandeep Matharu, president of the organization's board. Fresno City Council member Esmeralda Soria presented Singh with the proclamation, which reads, in part, "Dr. Kaur Singh's academic exploration and analysis of the creation of the Khalsa from a feminist perspective in Sikh scripture and literature, and her story of the Guru Granth Suhib, has done nothing short of opening the door to the study of women and Sikhism, and enabling the recognition of different features of shared humanity."

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Alison Bates has coauthored a paper titled "Energy justice and the co-opting of indigenous narratives in U.S. offshore wind development." Published in Renewable Energy Focus, the study finds that discourses in offshore wind decision-making de-legitimize marginalized communities and appropriate indigenous values, failing to meet the standards of justice in public engagement processes. Eana Bacchiocchi ’21 and Ingrid Sant ’21 are coauthors of the paper.