Previous Episodes

Blending Genetics and Phenomics to combat a Non-native Forest Disease in a Changing Climate
Featuring Jeremy Johnson, Ph.D.

White pine blister rust and climate change are both impacting the future survival of white pines in North America. By combining advances in phenotyping, genomics and ecology the pines may have a fighting chance. This lecture outlines our current understanding and proposes a way forward to protect the white pines struggling against multiple threats.

Dr. Johnson is a forest ecologist and geneticist with broad research interests geared towards understanding the spatial and temporal patterns of how forests respond to multiple threats associated with global ecological change. He does this by specializing in the use of geographic, landscape ecological, and genetic tools and theory. With the goal of ensuring the long-term survival of forests with effective conservation interventions and management.

Critical Psychology in Times of Crisis
Featuring Sebastienne Grant, Ph.D.
and Tuğce Kurtis, Ph.D.

Long critical psychology has become an international movement in the last five decades. Rather than a particular sub-discipline or theoretical framework, critical psychology consists of a variety of reactions to mainstream psychology and alternative visions ranging from those that seek to rethink or transform psychology to those that want to abolish it. Differently put, critical psychology constitutes both a critique of psychology and a critical way of doing psychology. In this session, Sebastienne Grant, the founding director of the Prescott College MA program in Critical Psychology and Human Services and Associate Faculty Tuğçe Kurtiş will provide an overview of theoretical and practical tenets and contributions of critical psychology. They will share their personal experiences and challenges within the field and discuss how critical psychology may serve as a tool for global social justice, especially in current times of crisis.

Critical psychology has become an international movement constituting both a critique of psychology and a critical way of doing psychology. Sebastienne Grant and Tuğçe Kurtiş will provide an overview of critical psychology, share personal experiences/challenges, and discuss how critical psychology may serve as a tool for global social justice.

Selfies, Frites, and Beer: Becoming a Posthuman in Belgium
Featuring Richard Lewis, Ph.D.

Richard Lewis, Ph.D. began working at Prescott College in 2005. His expertise is in media & technology. He recently took a five-year leave and sabbatical where he completed his doctorate in Belgium and a postdoc in France. His research is interdisciplinary, based in philosophy of technology and media & communications. His focus is on how technology is converging with the human subject and what this means for humanism, or more specifically, posthumanism. His relevant academic fields of study are: media literacy, media ecology, postphenomenology, philosophical/critical posthumanism, and complexity theory. His recent book, Technology, Media Literacy, and the Human Subject, was published by the academic press Open Book Publishers in 2021. It can be freely downloaded from their website:
 https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/1405

Interdependency of Culture and Biodiversity in the Dry Chaco Region of Northern Argentina: a Participatory Action Research Approach to Conservation
Featuring Mariana Altrichter, Ph.D.

The Argentine Chaco is an undeveloped, poor, remote area, and yet, it harbors rich criollo and indigenous cultures, as well as a biodiversity. In the last decade, this social-ecological system has been under threat by the expansion of agribusiness corporations.

Mariana will talk about the ways people have adapted to live in this environment for hundreds of years, and what she and her team are doing to conserve biodiversity and people’s livelihoods. She will share information about how the biological and ecological research she started in 2002 has been developing to become what is now a very integrative, interdisciplinary, co-participatory project, where she is working on increasing local capacities, empowering people to defend their environment and culture, co-creating research and activism projects, as well as co-creating educational material that valorizes traditional ecological knowledge.

Decolonizing Maasai History: Land, Culture and Indigenous African Futures
Featuring Mary Poole, Ph.D.

In this presentation, Mary Poole, Ph.D. presented a forthcoming book, coauthored with Meitamei Olol Dapash, that challenges the written historical narrative of the Maasai community of East Africa and suggest a new framing and approach to decolonizing Indigenous history. Mary has been a PC faculty member since 2003 when she and Meitamei created the Maasai Community Partnership program, which over the years has led Prescott College Students to conduct land rights research and provided other support to Maasai community activism for cultural survival and community organizing.

A Snapshot of Field Education at Institutions Across the Nation
Featuring Mathieu Brown

In this presentation, Mathieu Brown shares his exciting work with the the wThe River Field Studies Network (RFSN), a Community of Practice (CoP) that aims to advance Undergraduate Biology Education (UBE) and support healthy river ecosystems and communities through inclusive, immersive, interdisciplinary field-based pedagogy.  The CoP is a recipient of a 5-year National Science Foundation grant, whose origins date to a 2018 conference and the lobby of a Vancouver, Washington hotel. From this casual meeting grew a grant that aims to overcome institutional and cultural barriers to river field studies by investing in people, educational content, and infrastructure to support ongoing collaboration, outreach, and dissemination.