New Books in Environmental Studies

By Marshall PoeScience Natural Sciences

New Books in Environmental Studies episodes

July 19 Elana Resnick, "Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe" (Stanford UP, 2025)
Sustainability has become a touchstone for development worldwide,
promising an antidote to environmental degradation and capitalism's
excess: waste. Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe (Stanford University Press, 2025)
presents a fundamentally different account of sustainability and waste
itself by uncovering the intersections of international environmental
reforms and racialized labor. In Bulgaria, Roma comprise the bulk of the
country's waste workers, while anti-Roma racism casts them as socially
disposable. Without their labor, however, the country cannot meet the
sustainability targets required by the European Union. Drawing on
fieldwork that spans twenty years, including eleven months working
alongside Romani women street sweepers, and years embedded in waste
organizations, political campaigns, Roma NGOs, and activist groups,
Elana Resnick examines the power hierarchies that shape both waste
management and European geopolitics.
Instead of focusing on only environmental harms or toxic distributions, Refusing Sustainability approaches
Romani life-worlds as spaces of creative production, and also tells
several larger stories: of postsocialist racial capitalism,
environmental progressivism, democratic failures, mutual aid, and the
power of women's friendships. Through these stories, Resnick illuminates
how ordinary people, racialized as discardable, resist systems that
simultaneously rely on and exclude them.
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44 min
July 18 Gretchen Heefner, "Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How US Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Deserts,
the Arctic, outer space—these extreme environments are often seen as
inhospitable places at the edges of our maps. But from the 1940s through
the 1960s, spurred by the diverse and unfamiliar regions the US
military had navigated during World War II, the United States defense
establishment took a keen interest in these places, dispatching troops
to the Aleutian Islands, North Africa, the South Pacific, and beyond. To
preserve the country’s status as a superpower after the war, to pave
runways and build bridges, engineers had to understand and then conquer
dunes, permafrost, and even the surface of the moon.
Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How US Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments
(University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Gretchen Heefner explores
how the US military generated a new understanding of these environments
and attempted
to master them, intending to cement America’s planetary power.
Operating in these regions depended as much on scientific and cultural
knowledge as on military expertise
and technology. From General George S. Patton learning the hard way
that the desert is not always hot, to the challenges of constructing a
scientific research base under the Arctic ice, to the sheer
implausibility of modeling
Martian environments on Earth, Dr. Heefner takes us on a wry expedition
into the extremes and introduces us to the people who have shaped our
insight into these extraordinary environments. Even decades after the
first manned space flight,
plans for human space exploration and extraplanetary colonization are
still based on what we know about stark habitats on Earth.
An entertaining survey of the relationship between environmental history and military might, Sand, Snow, and Stardust
also serves as a warning about the further transformation of the
planet—whether through desertification, melting ice caps, or attempts to
escape it entirely.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

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52 min
July 18 Georgia Holly et al, .eds., "Heritage in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and Beyond" (U Edinburgh Press, 2025)
Heritage in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and Beyond (U Edinburgh Press, 2025) outlines the need to embed Ocean Heritage into ocean science, sustainable development, and marine conservation to meet the goals of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030) and beyond. Ocean Heritage—spanning tangible sites, such as shipwrecks or submerged harbours, and intangible connections such as traditional practices and knowledge systems—remains underrepresented in ocean governance. Yet it offers critical insights for more effective policy and research. Its inclusion is essential to ensuring science is informed by human–ocean relationships and responsive to the needs of communities.
Led by the Cultural Heritage Framework Programme (CHFP), the Ocean Decade’s only programme focused on Ocean Heritage, this text demonstrates how heritage supports all 10 Ocean Decade Challenges. Ocean Heritage strengthens climate adaptation, improves spatial planning, and supports equitable governance by grounding decisions in historical context and lived experience. The paper draws on more than 20 CHFP-endorsed initiatives, offering clear case studies and actionable recommendations for policy alignment, institutional support, and multidisciplinary collaboration.
As the Ocean Decade reaches its midpoint, this book offers a path forward: one where science draws on the full range of human—ocean relationships to guide sustainable, equitable action. Ocean Heritage is not a symbolic gesture—it is a fundamental human right. Rather than treating culture as an add-on to marine conservation, this paper calls for its broad integration into ocean science and decision-making.

Athena Trakadas is a maritime archeologist who studies underwater and coastal marine cultural heritage and advises international and national heritage, marine science and governmental organizations.
Helen Dewar is an historian of the Atlantic World and French colonization in North America in the 17th and 18th centuries. She is a professor of history at the Université de Montréal (Québec, Canada) and the author of Disputing New France: Companies, Sovereignty and Law in the French Atlantic, 1598-1663 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022). helen.dewar[at]umontreal.ca Helen’s institutional website
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1 hr 1 min
July 16 Spirituality, Science and Environmentalism in Taiwan
Who is Shennong, the Divine Farmer? And how can he help us understand the intricate relationships between spirituality, science and environmentalism in Taiwan today? These questions are at the heart of new research by the University of Oslo’s Koen Wellens and Mette Halskov Hansen. In this episode, we are joined by Koen Wellens for a conversation on religious responses to environmental change, community temples, and reconnecting to nature via the Divine Farmer in the context of contemporary Taiwan.
You can read more about the research discussed in this episode in the book Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia, published by Leiden University Press.
Koen Wellens is Professor of China Studies at the University of Oslo.
Kenneth Bo Nielsen, your host, is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for South Asian Democracy at the University of Oslo.
The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway).
We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.
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20 min
July 11 Mary E. Mendoza, "Deadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens, and People Defied the US-Mexico Border" (UNC Press, 2026)
As many as ten thousand people attempt to illegally cross the border
between the US and Mexico each month, braving deserts, rivers, and other
environmental hazards in the process. But the very illegality of that
crossing has an environmental history, writes Penn State University
assistant professor Mary Mendoza in Deadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens, and People Defied the US-Mexico Border
(University of North Carolina Press, 2026). It was diseases, microbes,
insects, and animals which, in part, hardened the border from a porous
array of landscapes into the militarized zone seen on the news every
night. However, despite the ecological and political difficulties of
doing so, people continue to cross the border between the two countries,
defying environmental odds and risking death along the way. In Deadly Divide,
Mendoza explains why, underscores the risks involved, and shows how we
got to this point, keeping an eye on the border region's stark landscape
with every step of the way.
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50 min
July 10 Ali Fard, "Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
Since the 1990s, technologists have promoted a vision of the “cloud” as a shapeless and intangible entity. Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data
(University of Minnesota Press, 2026) by Dr. Ali Fard peers through
this hazy façade to reveal the earthly material foundations of global
computing and data extraction. Tracing the historical and technological
development of the cloud computing paradigm, Dr. Fard exposes an
ever-evolving project in which ideologies, economic models, and
marketing images collude to shape our shared urban environments.
Demonstrating how technology’s spatial footprint now stretches to nearly every corner of the globe, Grounding the Cloud analyzes
the often-hidden infrastructures that facilitate platform
capitalism—from the mines extracting rare earth minerals in remote
regions to the vast global network of fiber-optic cables at the bottom of the oceans to the nondescript data centers
that sit on the peripheries of major urban areas. Meanwhile, with
compelling examples of smart-city initiatives and corporate campuses,
Dr. Fard shows how the future of urbanism is deeply intertwined with the
growing economies of data extraction.
Breaking
down the myth of a clean and efficient tech urbanism, this book makes
visible the complex material geographies and geopolitics that undergird
today’s most powerful and omnipresent corporations. A timely critique of
the growing agency of tech platforms in determining the future of urban
space, Grounding the Cloud offers an essential framework for understanding the shifting relationship between technology and urbanization.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

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44 min
July 08 Meena Khandelwal, "Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women's Technology in India" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
Stove
improvers have been designing and promoting “clean” or “efficient”
biomass cookstoves in India since the 1940s and have been frustrated to
find their carefully engineered stoves abandoned in trash heaps or
repurposed as storage bins, while the traditional mud chulha retains a
central place in the kitchen. Why do so many Indian women continue to
use wood-burning, smoke-spewing stoves when they have other options?
Based on anthropological research in Rajasthan, Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women’s Technology in India (University of Arizona Press, 2024) by Dr. Meena Khandelwal argues that the supposedly obsolete
chulha persists because it offers women control over the tools needed
to feed their families. Their continued use of old stoves alongside the
new is not a failure to embrace new technologies
but instead a strategy to maximize flexibility and autonomy. The chulha
is neither the villain nor hero of this story. It produces particulate
matter that harms people’s bodies, leaves soot on utensils and walls, and
accelerates glacial melting and atmospheric warming. Yet it also
depends on renewable biomass fuel and supports women’s autonomy as a
local, do-it-yourself technology.
Dr.
Khandelwal, a feminist anthropologist, describes her collaboration with
engineers, archaeologists, and others. She employs critical social
theory and reflections from fieldwork to bring together research from a
range of fields, including history, geography, anthropology, energy and
environmental studies, public health, and science and technology studies
(STS). In so doing she not only demystifies multidisciplinary research
but also highlights the messy reality of actual behavior.
Cookstove Chronicles
critically examines why, despite extensive development efforts, use of
the chulha persists. It offers an important new framework for looking at
development, technology, environmental change, and human behavior.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

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58 min
July 04 Sadiah Qureshi, "Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction" (Penguin, 2025)
Anyone
alive today is among a tiny fraction of the once living: over 90% of
species that ever existed are now extinct. How did we come to think of
ourselves as survivors in a world where species can vanish forever, or
as capable of pushing our planet to the verge of a sixth mass
extinction?
Extinction, Professor Sadiah Qureshi shows us, is a surprisingly modern concept—and a phenomenon that’s
not as natural as we might think. In Europe until the late eighteenth
century, species were considered perfect and unchanging creations of
God. Then in the age of revolutions, scientists gathered enough fossil
evidence to determine
that mammoth bones, for example, were not just large elephants but a
lost species that once roamed the Earth alongside ancient humans.
Extinction went from being regarded as theologically dangerous to
pervasive, and even inevitable.
Yet Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction (Penguin, 2025) shows us that extinction is more than a scientific idea; it’s
a political choice that has led to devasting consequences. Europeans
and Americans quickly used the notion that extinction was a natural
process to justify persecution and genocide, predicting that nations
from Newfoundland’s Beothuk to Aboriginal Australians were doomed to die
out from imperial expansion.
Exploring the tangled and unnatural histories of extinction and empire, Vanished
weaves together pioneering original research and breath-taking
storytelling to show us extinction is both an evolutionary process and a
human act: one which illuminates our past, and may alter our future.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

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37 min
July 03 Making Microbes Explicit
This episode takes listeners into the latest issues of Gastronomica, with a special feature on microbes. Sarah Elton and Maya Hey talk with Dan Bender of the Gastronomica Editorial Collective about their special section on microbes and food. In a conversation that spans food systems, environment, health, dietetics, and culture, they explore human microbial relationships from the soil to the processing plant, at the grocery store, in home kitchens, and beyond. Sarah and Maya share how they each came to the study of microbes, discuss what microbes are and what it means to center microbes in food studies research, and reflect on some of the policy implications. Their two-part special section in the Spring and Summer 2026 issues of Gastronomica brings together 11 articles on microbes in food and food systems from researchers around the world.
Listeners can find "Making Microbes Explicit: Introduction to Microbes, Food, and Food Systems" by Maya Hey and Sarah Elton, and their co-written follow-up piece, "Finding the Microbes in Food Studies” in Gastronomica (issues 26.1 and 26.2).
Sarah Elton is an assistant professor and Eakin Chair in Critical Qualitative Health Research Methodology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. She has published widely, with her research appearing most recently in journals such as Nature Cities, Social & Cultural Geography, Qualitative Inquiry and Gastronomica. She is also the author of Locavore (HarperCollins Canada 2010) and Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet (University of Chicago Press, 2013).
Maya Hey is based in Stockholm at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, where she is a postdoctoral researcher with the Environmental Humanities Laboratory. Her interdisciplinary work on microbes draws on her background in food studies, dietetics, and communication. Her new book, Singing with Invisible Worlds: Fermenting Sake on Microbial Time will be published later this year by the University of Minnesota Press.
Daniel E. Bender is a professor of food studies, environmental studies, and history at the University of Toronto, the President of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS), and Co-Chair of the Editorial Collective at Gastronomica.
Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network here. Subscribe to Gastronomica’s podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes.
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41 min
July 03 Podcast Intellectuals Podcast Panel #3 with Allison Carruth and Ellen Horne
This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On May 13, 2026, Princeton’s Center for Human Values hosted a day-long conference titled Audio and Ideas: Exploring the Possibilities for Scholarly Podcasting. It was co-sponsored by Princeton’s Journalism program, and the NYU Podcast Initiative. Over the course of four panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research.
In the third panel, Allison Carruth and Ellen Horne discussed the relationship between podcasting and science. Carruth is a professor at Princeton’s Effron Center for the Study of America and the High Meadows Environmental Institute. At Princeton, she directs the Program in Environmental Studies and leads Blue Lab, an environmental media and storytelling studio. Her research and teaching areas include climate storytelling, environmental art and narrative, contemporary food movements and the evolving relationships between technology and environmentalism in American culture. She is the author of Global Appetites: American Power and the Literature of Food.
Horne directs the Podcasting and Audio Reportage concentration at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Her research is focused on performance, documentation, the perception of authority in voice, labor and production in audio and podcasting. Horne was producer for Admissible: Shreds of Evidence, a 13-episode investigative podcast that told the story of shocking misconduct at a Virginia state crime lab. Admissible won the Gold Award for Best Documentary at the Signal Awards; an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association, and the Public Media Award NETA for Best Podcast. Horne was an executive producer at Audible and an executive producer for WNYC’s Radiolab.
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51 min

About New Books in Environmental Studies

From the publisher's feed

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.