Individuals
Dr. Bazerman is interested in the practice and teaching of writing, understood in a socio-historic context. Using socially based theories of genre, activity system, interaction, intertextuality, and cognitive development, he investigates the history of scientific writing, other forms of writing used in advancing technological projects, and the relation of writing to the development of disciplines of knowledge. Some of his studies involve the history and organization of Environmental knowledge and communication. Most recently he has worked on how climate change knowledge enters into or is restricted within political representations and the deliberations of Congressional hearings. He was an early advocate for open access epublication and has been an active participant in the formation and current operations of the WAC Clearinghouse, now the leading publisher of book, journal, and other formats in writing studies. He has published on this experience in several chapters, documenting the process and providing lessons learned.
Carsey-Wolf Center
Dr. Graves’ research interests include public history, California history, Environmental history, and U.S. history. He specializes in federal water resources development and resource allocation. He also conducts Environmental and historical investigations of industrial sites in the partnership Graves & Neushul Historical Consultants. His publications include Pursuing Excellence in Water Planning and Policy Analysis: A History of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Institute for Water Resources; From These Beginnings: A Biographical Approach to American History; and "The Rhetoric of Opposition: Anti-conservation and the Early Forest Reserves," in Journal of the West.
Carsey-Wolf Center
Ken Hiltner is a professor of English literature and Environmental Studies. He explores the history of literature and the relationship between literary history and our Earth in order to better understand how we arrived at our current Environmental beliefs. Hiltner is active in examining Environmental issues from various perspectives. He hosts a weekly podcast, the Environmental Humanities Podcast, where he conducts interviews with scholars and artists to discuss how Environmental issues are taken up across the humanities. He also has given various talks, such as "Nature: How Much Does it Matter," "The Role of Our Past In Our Environmental Future," and "Environmental Criticism: What is at Stake?"
Jevbratt is a professor in the art department. Her research and art is investigating humans’ relationship with non-human animals and the natural environment. She has been developing software that simulates how animals see, and she teaches classes in interspecies collaboration in the art department. She is currently leading a fiber arts project mapping invasive species on the Channel Islands, investigating invasive species ecology, and larger issues of conservation and belonging. The project is giving its audience-participants hands on experience with historical methods of textile production, and raises questions about the sustainability of our current textile industry. Her work and teaching is continuously engaged with questions about sustainability through examining the relationships we create with other species and our shared environment.
Carsey-Wolf Center
Professor Peljhan's research focuses on the relationship between arts, sciences and engineering and works globally. His recent projects involve the Makrolab, a multi year awarded project that focuses on telecommunications, migrations, and weather systems research at the intersection of art and science from 1997-2007, and since 2008 he has been coordinating the Arctic Perspective Initiative art/science/tactical media project which is focused on the global significance of the Arctic geopolitical, natural, and cultural spheres. Through his and his Systemics lab partnership in the non-profit institute Projekt Atol he has in the past 10 years led and contributed to a series of European Union co-funded collaborative art, environment and technology research initiatives such as Changing Weathers (coordinating), Green (partner), Feral labs (coordinating), Rewilding Cultures (coordinating). As part of these projects, he helped setup the yearly and ongoing PIF CAMP research residency in the Slovenian Alps for UCSB students. In 2020 his 10 year collaborative effort to design and launch a major capability remote-sensing 2m GSD microsatellite NEMO-HD has succeeded and is now in orbit and in 2022 he has established a mobile remote-sensing art/science research lab SPEKTR-Z that among others contributed the principal charting of the largest forest wildfires in Slovenia that same year. From 2024 to 2026 he is leading a European Capital of Culture major research initiative ISOLABS, that is focused on remote/sensing and digital twin modeling of the 138km long Alpine/Mediterranean Soca/Isonzo river system. Currently, his Systemics lab is also involved in a project for the development of low cost underwater sensing swarm robots for environmental research in littoral zones.
Carsey-Wolf Center
Dr. Propen's research interests include visual and material rhetorics, Environmental and sustainability rhetorics, digital and posthuman rhetorics, rhetoric and technical communication as advocacy work, writing in the disciplines, classical and contemporary rhetorical theory, animal studies, human geography, critical cartographies, and critical GIS.
Professor Rice studies, among other topics, public communication campaigns, with some emphasis on Environmental communication. In his most recent edition of "Public Communication Campaigns"; he co-authored a chapter that applies principles of social marketing to communicating about ocean sustainability. That chapter focused on developing a strategic approach to designing and implementing messages about ocean sustainability issues, such as ocean pollution, warming, acidification, overfishing, and low oxygen levels. He has also published research on college campus water bottle usage, ocean sustainability literacy, news images about climate change, and uncertainty and controversy in climate change news. In 2015, Professor Rice co-organized a day-long conference on Sustainable Science Communication and a post-conference International workshop on climate and sustainability campaigns. He also organized the 2019 Rupe conference on The Secret Lives of Plastic: Materials, Recycling, Oceans, & Communication.
Professor Shewry's research interests include pacific rim cultures, Environmental studies, and oceans and water. She is the director of Literature and the Environment at UCSB. Her recent publications include "Possible Ecologies: Literature, Nature, and Hope in the Pacific" and "Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century." Her book, Hope at Sea: Possible Ecologies in Oceanic Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), explores hope in the context of Environmental change in the Pacific.
Carsey-Wolf Center
Dr. Siegel studies interdisciplinary marine science which couples physical, biological, optical, and biogeochemical processes. He has recently worked on collecting large scale ocean data by using ocean color variability from satellites. Differences in color can indicate distinguishing characteristics such as temperature and the overall biochemistry of the water. This data allows scientists to observe long-term trends and better understand the role oceans play in climate change as well as ascertain what marine ecosystems might look like in the future.
Carsey-Wolf Institute
Marine Science Institute
Professor Smith’s work focuses on U.S. public opinion and political behavior regarding energy and environmental issues. He investigates, for example, public support for or opposition to renewable energy production facilities and offshore oil drilling. He is also working on the problem of how much people know about energy and environmental issues and why people accept or reject factual claims about energy and environmental issues by scientists.
Professor Stohl is current involved in a project entitled: Sustainability at the Crossroads: Examining the Vulnerability of New Zealand’s Global Environmental Positioning. The research project aims to understand how interested parties, including NZ policy makers, media, and business leaders think about, frame, and prioritise environmental, social and economic sustainability issues and with what consequences.
Carsey-Wolf Institute
Dr. Walker researches and teaches in the areas of documentary film, trauma and memory, and Environmental media with a concentration on climate justice. Her co-edited volume, Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment (Routledge 2016, with Nicole Starosielski), is among her scholarly publications that study films and videos about Environmental topics and media infrastructures in the built Environment. Walker was one of five UCSB faculty convenors of the Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Energy Justice in Global Perspective (2017-2019) and serves as co-editor of the University Press open access journal Media+Environment (mediaEnviron.org).
Environmental Media Initiative Research Group
California Council for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
American Council of Learned Societies