Faculty
Environmental Policy and Culture Program Committee, 2009-10
YAEL WOLINSKY, Environmental Policy and Culture and Political Science
PAUL FRIESEMA, Environmental Policy and Culture and Political
Science
KIMBERLY GRAY, Environmental and Civil Engineering
ANDREW JACOBSON, Earth and Planetary Sciences
SUSAN L. THISTLE, Sociology
SARAH TAYLOR , Religion
NYREE ZEREGA, Plant Biology and Conservation
Faculty offering environmental courses and
other affiliated scholars
Joseph Barton
History. PhD, Michigan. U.S. Ethnic "immigration" and Labor history; Latin America. Research and teaching includes topics of immigration, labor, the environment, and in case of the United States, themes of peasantries and rural communities in connection with Latin America. Teaches 215-0 Western Hemisphere Environments.
Henry Binford
History. PhD, Harvard. Specializes in U.S. social, cultural and urban history, particularly the nineteenth century evolution of sub-communities within cities, including suburbs and slums. Also interested in efforts to re-develop cities in the twentieth century. Teaches 322-0 Teach Development of the Modern American City, 1870 to Present.
Neal Blair
Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth and Planetary Sciences. Research focuses on the biogeochemical transformation of carbon with an emphasis on process-oriented studies of the evolution and fate of organic matter in surficial environments. Teaches 106-0 The Ocean, the Atmosphere & Our Climate.
Toby Bolsen
tobybolsen2008@u.northwestern.edu
Political Science. PhD Candidate and a Graduate Fellow at Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research. Specializes in public opinion formation, political behavior, and U.S. energy policy. Dissertation explains how values, attitudes, social norms, and the media effect personal decisions about energy consumption (both capital investments and energy conservation).
Brain Bouldrey
English. Teaches fiction and creative non-fiction. Author of University the non-fiction books Honorable Bandit: A Walk Across Corsica, Monster: Adventures in American Machismo, and The Autobiography Box. Novels include The Genius of Desire and The Boom Economy. Teaches 368-0 Literature and Environment.
Elizabeth M. Brumfiel
Anthropology. PhD, Michigan. Archaeologist with interests in Mesoamerican archaeology and ethnohistory, gender archaeology, class and factional dynamics in prehistoric societies, Aztec religion. Books include The Aztec World (co-edited, with G.M. Feinman) and Gender, Households, and Society (co-edited, with Cynthia Robin). Teaches 383-0 Environmental Anthropology.
Cherie LeBlanc Fisher
USDA Forest Service. M.E.M. (Master of Environmental Management), Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Studies natural disaster preparation and planning, urban environmental stewardship, and people's perceptions of the availability/scarcity of water supplies in the United States.
H. Paul Friesema
Political Science. PhD, University of Iowa. Interests include natural resources, environmental policy, urban politics, political issues arising in the environmental assessment process and the political empowerment of native peoples on issues concerning natural resources. Author and co-author of four books and some 30 scholarly articles. Teaches 329-0 U.S. Environmental Politics and 367-0 Politics and Nature in a Comparative Perspective.
Jean-François Gaillard
Civil and Environmental Engineering. Research interests focus on biogeochemical processes in aquatic Systems.Teaches Envr Sci 201 A Habitable Planet.
Gary Galbreath
Biological Science, PhD. Conducts evolutionary and Conservation biology research in Southeast Asia. Provides scientific advice to wildlife protection organizations there, and to organizations that conserve rainforests in Peru. Recent publications include An apparent hybrid wild bear from Cambodia, co-authored with M. Hunt, T. Clements, and L.P. Wait. Teaches 103-0 Diversity of Life.
Paul Gobster
USDA Forest Service and Political Science. PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Research Social Scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Areas of research include human perception and experience of landscapes, the meaning and value of nature, and access and equity issues. Recently taught PoliSci 390 Green Chicago.
Kimberly Gray
Civil and Environmental Engineering. PhD, Johns Hopkins University. Director of the Environmental Science, Engineering and Policy Program. Research interests include learning how to harness light energy tocatalyze reactions to attack pollutants or make chemical fuels, tracingchemicals through food webs in the Great Lakes and figuring out howwetlands work. Also interested in ecologically inspired design, especially as applied to cities. Teaches Envr Sci 203-0 Energy and the Environment: The Automobile.
Karen Tranberg Hansen
Anthropology. PhD, Washington. Socio-cultural anthropologist.
Teaching and research interests include Urban Anthropology, Political Economy, Economic Anthropology, Consumption and Material Culture, Dress and Fashion, Gender Relations, Southern Africa, Development Issues. Teaches 372-0 Third World Urbanization.
Keith Harley
Civil and Environmental Engineering. J.D. Chicago-Kent. Director of the Environmental Law Program at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. Teaches 303-0 Special Topics: Environmental Law and Policy.
John Hudson
Anthropology. Director, Geography Program. Associate Director, Environmental Sciences Program. PhD, Iowa. Research and Teaching interests include cultural and physical geography of North America, biogeography, economic geography, cartography and mapping, geographic information systems. Recent publications include Across This Land: A Regional Geography of the United States and Canada (2002) and Chicago: A Geography of the city and its region (2006). Teaches 235-0 Atmosphere and Climate.
Albert Hunter
Sociology. PhD, University of Chicago. Areas of interest include urban sociology, community, civil society, ethnicity, culture and literature, and methods. Broad methodological interests include multi-method research and studies in the rhetoric of science. Continuing research on symbolic ecology in a series of community case studies, including a restudy of Zorbaugh's The Gold Coast and the Slum, a study of the elite suburb of Kenilworth, a study of neighborhood responses to gangs, and a study of local ethnic institutions. Teaches 301-0 The City: Urbanization and Urbanism.
Matt Hurtgen
Earth and Planetary Sciences. PhD, Pennsylvania State University. Research interests include modern and ancient sedimentary systems and integrating field observations with a variety of geochemical tools in order to investigate the chemical evolution of Earth’s coupled ocean-atmosphere system. Teaches 105-0 Climate Catastrophes in Earth History, 203-0 Earth System History.
Steven Jacobsen
Earth and Planetary Sciences. PhD, University of Colorado. Research is aimed toward understanding the origin and properties of Earth and planetary materials through experiment. Teaches Freshman Seminar 102-6 The Future of Renewable Energy.
L. Lynne Kiesling
Economics. PhD, Northwestern University. Research interests include Industrial Organization and Public Policy. Interests include electricity and natural gas industry restructuring, telecommunications regulation and restructuring, and the role of property rights, information, and transaction costs in shaping these changes. Teaches 370-0 Environmental & Natural Resource Economics.
Abraham Lerman
Geological Sciences. PhD, Harvard University. Research interests include global biogeochemical cycles in the geologic past and present; geochemical and transport processes in the surficial and underground environment; natural and anthropogenic controls of geochemical systems. Teaches 111-0 Human Dimensions of Global Change, 316-0 Earth's Changing Climate.
Sarah M. McCaffrey
USDA Forest Service. PhD, University Of California-Berkeley. Conducts and coordinates research to better understand the social dynamics of fire management. Responsible for a National Fire Plan grant examining social acceptability of fuels treatment methods. Part of the Fuels Planning synthesis project, a national effort to synthesize current scientific knowledge on fuels treatments from both the ecological and social perspectives. Recently taught PoliSci 390.
Steve Perkins
Steve-perkins@northwestern.edu
Political Science. PhD. Senior Vice President of the Center for neighborhood Technology, Chicago. Teaches 394-0 Climate Change and Local Action.
Herbert W. Schroeder
USDA Forest Service. PhD, University of Arizona. Research examines how people experience outdoor environments with a particular focus on the role of trees and other natural features in people’s experience. Uses qualitative and quantitative methods to measure people’s perceptions of environments.
Mark Sheldon
Philosophy and Medical Ethics and Humanities Program, Feinberg School of Medicine. PhD, Brandeis University. Interested in bioethics and particularly in potential conflicts between the interests of children, prerogatives of parents, and the obligations of the state in medical decisions for children. Teaches 268-0 Ethics and the Environment.
Francesca Smith
Earth and Planetary Science. PhD, University of Chicago. Research interests include the development and application of geochemical tools to examine large-scale biotic-abiotic interactions over geologic time and the responses of ancient ecosystems to climate change and analogs for ecosystem response to future global change. Teaches Freshman Seminar 106-2 Global Warming.
Susan I. Stewart
USDA Forest Service. PhD Michigan State University. Research focuses on the role of housing in landscape change. Developed methods to determine historic housing location at the sub-county scale and created spatially explicit longitudinal data in a GIS. Investigates the influence of housing density on forest productivity with other ecological data to understand housing's impacts.
David W. Taylor
Biological Science. PhD. Research interests include floristics, ethnobotany and evolutionary relationships of plants. Teaches courses on plant ecology, diversity, and structure and function, including 316-0 Spring Flora and 333-0 Plant-Animal Interaction.
Sarah Taylor
Religion. PhD, University of California-Santa Barbara. Specializes in the study of religion and American culture, religion and ecology, and women’s studies in religion. Courses focus on aspects of American religion and culture and explore various understandings of the category of religion as it relates to ethnicity, women's experiences, and the natural environment. Author of Green Sisters: A Spiritual Ecology (2007) and Eternally Green: American Religion and the Ecology of Death. Teaches 260-0 Introduction to Native American Religions. On research leave in 2008-2009.
Susan Thistle
Sociology. PhD, University of California-Berkeley. Courses in Gender, Economic Sociology, Environment, Family, Research Methods, and Social Policy. Areas of interest include sociological theory, gender, environment, historical and comparative sociology, and economic sociology. Teaches 312-0 Social Basis of Environmental Change.
Christina Traina
Religion. PhD, University of Chicago Divinity School. Areas of special interest include childhood, sexuality and reproduction, environment, and the ethics of economic justice. Author of Natural Law and Feminist Ethics: the End of the Anathemas.
Stuart Wagenius
Biological Science. PhD, University of Minnesota. Research interests include Conservation genetics, feedbacks between evolutionary and ecological dynamics, biology of Echinacea angustifolia in fragmented habitat, spatial scale-dependence in species interactions, and effects of fire on prairie plants. Teaches 313-0 Quantitative Methods for Ecology and Conservation, 332-0 Plant Conservation Genetics.
Joseph Walsh
Biological Sciences. PhD. Research interests include restoration ecology of tallgrass prairies, bur oak savannas, and oak woodlands. Teaches courses on conservation, ecology, evolution, biodiversity, genetics, and statistics, including 346-0 Field Ecology, and 347-0 Conservation Biology.
Lynne M. Westphal
USDA Forest Service. PhD University of Illinois, Chicago. Researches the natural resources of these areas and the damage they suffer from human-caused environmental degradation. Focus areas include the Calumet rustbelt landscape of southeast Chicago and northwest Indiana, and also the Iowa corn-belt landscape.
Mark Witte
Economics. Research interests include Macroeconomics and pubic finance. Teaches 370-0 Environmental & Natural Resource Economics.
Yael Wolinsky
Environmental Policy and Culture, Director, and Political Science. PhD, University of Chicago. Research interests include public attitudes on the environment and local ballot initiatives on environmental issues. Teaches 390-0 Global Climate Change: Policy and Society, 349-0 International Environmental Politics, and 390 Environmental Policy Research Seminar.
Nyree Conard Zerega
Biological Sciences. Director, Plant Biology and Conservation Master’s Program. PhD, New York University. Research integrates molecular, morphological, and Phylogenetic tools with fieldwork to investigate the systematics, evolution, biogeography, and reproductive ecology of plants. Interests also include the origins of cultivated plants and members of the Moraceae (mulberry) family. Teaches 350-0 Plant Evolution and Diversity Lab.
