News & Updates
November 2021 - Jeremiah Osborne-Gowey successfully defended his dissertation on November 9 and will graduate this winter. His thesis is titled, The Effects of Social Capital and Migration on Agricultural Practices and Well-Being among Farmers in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh: Evidence from Household Surveys. Jeremiah used data from two household surveys and diverse statistical approaches (multilevel models, hazard models) to examine the factors that support resilience in agricultural communities. Congratulations Jeremiah!
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November 2021 - The 20th century saw historically unprecedented rates of economic growth throughout the world. Yet, macroeconomic forecasts suggest that growth rates in developed democracies are likely to slow in the 21st century. Our new paper in Nature Human Behavior considers the potential consequences of a future of slow growth within the world's high-income democracies. We draw on research from economics, psychology, political science, and other fields to consider implications for inequality, civic participation, social capital, and well-being.
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October 2021 - Amanda Carrico is co-PI on a new grant from the National Science Foundation to study the public's values and priorities regarding how we manage public lands in Colorado. This $3.6M award will support research over 5 years into the effects of climate change and population pressure in mountain headwater systems, as well as the use of surveys and choice experiments to understand public perceptions. Funding comes from the NSF's new Growing Convergence Research program. Read more about the project here and here.
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June 2021 - Urooj Raja wins the AESS Best Student Paper Award, recognizing "the potential in graduate student research to create new insights and impact in environmental science and studies, and to engage with environmental policy, practice, and education." Her submission was recently published in the journal Environmental Communication and examines the subjective experience of learning about an environmental problem through the medium of virtual reality.
May 2021 - Congratulations to Dr. Urooj Raja for successfully defending her dissertation, Bridging Psychological Distance: Engaging the Public on Climate Change and Broader Environmental Problems. Urooj's research uses mixed methods to examine how emergent media technology and message frames shape the perceived immediacy and relevance of environmental problems, and how this translates into pro-environmental behavior and civic engagement. Urooj will be heading to Loyola University - Chicago in the Fall of 2021 to start a position as Assistant Professor in the School of Communications.
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January 2021 - Congratulations to Jeremiah Osborne-Gowey (PhD Student, Environmental Studies) who was recently recognized for teaching excellence with two awards: The Graduate Teaching Excellence Award from United Government of Graduate Students and the Teaching Excellence Award from the Environmental Studies Program. Check out more about Jeremiah's research and teaching here.
January 2021 - Can virtual reality be used as a tool to foster engagement in efforts to conserve and protect the environment? Urooj Raja's recent paper examines this question using qualitative interviews of individuals after experiencing a virtual reality simulation about ocean acidification. Her findings speak to the potential for VR to make seemingly remote and distant environmental challenges feel more relevant to our lives.
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October 2020 - Our latest paper (with Katharine Donato, Kelsea Best, & Jonathan Gilligan) offers a glimpse into how the lives of girls and women are affected by climate change. Families facing poverty sometimes pursue marriages for daughters as a way to cope. We find that females in Bangladesh (ages 11-23) are more likely to marry after heat waves and are more likely to marry into poorer homes.
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September 2020 - Congrats to lab affiliate Anna Hermes and colleagues for their new paper examining the effects of agriculture and wildfire on carbon and sulfer in watersheds. Sulfer and carbon mobilized through agriculture and wildfires can affect both ecosystem and human health.
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August 2019 - Congrats to E&B PhD student Jeremiah Osborne-Gowey, who was recently awarded a competitive NSF-SESYNC grant to study social responses to environmental shocks. Jeremiah and his colleagues from the Universities of Maryland and Vermont will use text mining of social media, newspapers, and other data sources to better understand how people perceived and respond to environmental shocks. Read the press release here: SESYNC Funds New Pursuits and Workshops.
July 2019 - Congrats to E&B lab alumni Brianne Eby (now a policy analyst at the Eno Center for Transportation). Her master's research on the psychological and behavioral impacts of environmental identity labeling was recently published in the journal Climatic Change.
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May 2019 - Congratulations to PhD student Victoria Stout, who received the NSF's prestigious graduate research fellowship program (GRFP) award. Eech year the NSF select's ~2000 fellows from nearly 20,000 applicants to receive three years of financial support
as they pursue a graduate degree. Victoria's research examines social and cultural dimensions of human-wildlife interactions, with an emphasis on bat conservation. Learn more here. |
December 2018 - The National Academies Committee on Grand Challenges in Environmental Engineering report is out! E&B director Amanda Carrico is one of 18 authors. The report identifies the biggest challenges and opportunities faced by environmental engineers in the next several decades.
August 2017 - CNH grant awarded to study population mobility and landscape change in Bangladesh
With new funding from the NSF's Coupled Natural and Human Systems program, our research team will begin a new phase of research to examine how coastal dynamics and land use change influence migration in Bangladesh. This four-year, $1.5M grant will bring together a diverse team of social and natural scientists. The team includes Amanda Carrico (ENVS), Kimberly Rogers (INSTAAR), Katharine Donato (Georgetown), Carol Wilson (LSU), and Jonathan Gilligan (Vanderbilt). This work will build on the Bangladesh Environment & Migration Survey and the ADAPT-SL project to examine livelihood adaptations to environmental change. |