Members
Register of AnthFOR members' research interests
My research focuses on describing and analysing the complexity of providing climate services in Argentina and South America, and how climate information can be improved taking into consideration expectations and needs of climate sensitive sectors. In addition, my post-doctoral research addresses how climate services can be useful to support adaptation to variability and climate change in the agricultural sector of Argentina. More info
Trained in anthropology and African Studies Sara has a strong empirical orientation, with long-term fieldwork experience in Madagascar, Cameroon and Tanzania. She has carried out “ethnographies of aid” – at the intersection of STS, development theories, environmental anthropology and postcolonial studies – broadly focused on how globally circulating ideas, such as climate change, travel, and what happens when they are translated by varying actors along the translation chain. More info
My research includes studies of the negotiation and translation of knowledges in the context of environmental decision-making. I have explored perceptions of the environment, changing livelihoods, infrastructural development, and the use of scientific predictions for resource and hazard management in Belize, Kenya and the UK, focusing on anticipatory framings of environment and development interventions. More info
Jen a social scientist in the U.S. who works with weather and climate experts to understand the sociotechnical, ethical, and political dimensions of their forecasts/warnings as they circulate among different publics. She draws on ethnographic methods and theories from Science and Technology Studies to make legible the often invisible notions of harm, power, and responsibility. More info
My research has been in the cultural history of meteorology, numerical weather prediction, medical climatology and urban climatology in relation to urban design. Currently working on the AHRC project on the history of Soviet climate science and developing an initiative on the history of climate futures. More info
Myanna Lahsen studies socio-cultural and political dynamics related to global environmental change, environmental sustainability and development, with special attention to science-policy interfaces and related knowledge politics in the United States and Brazil. One of the strands of my research explores sociological patterns and conflicts reflected in divergent framings of climate science and policy options, including the relationship between climate change and extreme weather events and policy consequences of linking the two. More info
My research focuses primarily on understanding how things like risk perceptions, risk communication, and decision making help alleviate vulnerability and enhance adaptive capacities in ways that lead to less disastrous outcomes. I examine the entire lifecycle of weather and climate hazards to understand how the pre-disaster phase influences the generation, understanding, and impacts of disasters with special attention to "rigorous compassion" - how we can use our methods and theories with compassion for better outcomes. More info
I focus on climate change issues (narratives of change; adaptation; STS) in high mountain regions, particularly the Andes. I am a lead author on the IPCC Special Report on Oceans and the Cryosphere and on the Sixth Assessment Report. I also work more generally on policy issues (risk analysis decision-making, governance). More info
My current research explores: social constructions of weather and flood risk, weather and flood forecast and warning policy as a form of governance and the everyday relations that are governed through policy, and how text-based and face-to-face interaction lend to the creation of expert and professional identities as well as coordinate actions and decision-making behaviour within and across groups of producers, communicators, and users of weather information.
I have written on the so-called “rain prophets” of rural Northeast Brazil, and how meteorological information is transformed when it reaches traditional communities. I am now working with the idea of “alter geoengineering”, referring to non-Western technologies for manipulating the atmosphere, and how they relate to science and environmental politics in Brazil. I am also working in a project that studies the challenges of the collaboration between climate scientists and engineers working in large infrastructural systems (the Brazilian electric system, in this case). More info
