Thursday, October 8, 2020, 12:30 pm via Zoom
UMaine Explores Gendered Environmental Issues
Join three University of Maine scholars and advocates to discuss Women and the Environment. Our topics will be wide-ranging including ecofeminism and early women activists like Rachel Carson whose scientific contributions to our understanding of ecosystems and pesticides led to wider public awareness of ecology and the environment in the 1960’s. We will also discuss the disproportionate effect of climate change on women globally. Women have been and can continue to be effective advocates for mitigating climate change in 2020. In spite of the fact that women are positioned to make unique contributions to climate science, policy and negotiations, they remain underrepresented in key political, scientific and media discourse in the U.S. Panelists will share their experiences of sexism in the field and in the laboratory and speak of ways we can advocate for underrepresented groups in STEM.
Our Panelists:
- Katherine Glover (she/her) is a Research Associate at the Climate Change Institute, where she researches paleoenvironmental change. She is interested in the disproportionate effect climate change has on women globally, and feminist leadership frameworks as a solution to this crisis. She earned her Ph.D. in Geography from UCLA in 2016. She will be teaching “WGS 301/501 Women and Climate Change.”
- Sandra Haggard, Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Maine at Augusta, will be teaching “WGS 230 Women, Health, and the Environment.” Both a second and a third wave feminist, Professor Haggard is a pioneering leader of feminist activism in Maine and at the University of Maine. She was part of the faculty who created the first interdisciplinary courses in Women Studies in the University of Maine System in the 1970’s
- Karen James (she/her) is an independent research scientist working in collaboration with the Climate Change Institute. After earning her Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Washington in 2002, she researched evolutionary biology and molecular systematics at the Natural History Museum in London and molecular ecology at MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor. She has done fieldwork in the Siberian Arctic and other remote locations, and can speak to sexism in the field and laboratory. She advocates for women and other underrepresented groups in STEM on Twitter (@kejames) and elsewhere.
To link to the Zoom discussion, click here.