Fulbright Scholar Dr. Stephanie Kane is the inaugural Research Chair in Environmental Sciences at the Richardson College for the Environment
WINNIPEG, MB – Flooding has been a hot topic this summer in Manitoba and across the prairies, with the province recently preparing for the worst. The apparent trend towards more extreme hydrological events is increasingly being considered part of the province’s future. UWinnipeg has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar—Dr. Stephanie Kane—who will study the infrastructure of river diversion as a vital security system and plans to trace attributions linking flood events to global climate change.
Kane is professor at the School of Global and International Studies, Indiana University and joins UWinnipeg as the inaugural Research Chair in Environmental Sciences at the Richardson College for the Environment under the Fulbright program.
“I plan to systematically collect self-reports of how ordinary folk, water scientists and engineers negotiated past hazards and imagine future alternatives,” explained Kane. “Holistic analysis of floodgate and evacuation decisions will ensure that this research will have pragmatic and scholarly significance.”
“The timing of Dr. Kane’s project could not be better,” expressed Dr. Danny Blair, Professor of Geography, Associate Dean of Science, Acting Principal, Richardson College for the Environment. “The floods of 2011 and 2014 have initiated an enormous amount of concern and debate about how we respond to floods. Her perspective on these issues, especially in the context of climate change will be of great interest to many stakeholders.”
“I love starting new projects,” said Kane. “I am looking forward to being in Canada and working with my colleagues at UWinnipeg and meeting new people.”
Kane’s career has drawn on her training in anthropology, ecology and biology to study central problems in social and environmental justice and public health. She has traveled widely, doing ethnographic fieldwork in the cities and forests of Central and South America (first in Costa Rica, then in Brazil, Panama, Belize, Argentina and Peru) and more recently in Asia (India and Singapore). In the Port City Water Project, the subject of her 2012 book Where Rivers Meet the Sea, she develops a comparative, cross-cultural framework for understanding contemporary infrastructural and ecological dilemmas.
Her current fieldwork, builds on this cross-cultural framework to study social and environmental justice dimensions of engineering and flood events and to create an ethnographic entryway into the study of disaster and climate change.
The Canada-US Fulbright program is centred on study of Canada-US relations, trade, integration, public policy, urban and regional planning, communications, culture, environmental policy, indigenous issues, law and economics. Students and faculty members across a broad range of disciplines can participate in Fulbright.
The University of Winnipeg signed a Memorandum of Understanding in 2007 with the prestigious Canada-US Fulbright Program, strengthening the University’s focus on internationalization and opening up opportunities for UWinnipeg students and faculty to lecture, research and pursue graduate studies in the United States and for Americans to do the same at UWinnipeg.
UWinnipeg’s Richardson College is establishing itself as a centre of excellence in applied research and policy in the area of climate change, including climate change mitigation and adaptation. Working in co-operation with government, industry and leading environmental organizations, faculty and staff associated with the Richardson College are attracting research funding for projects that lead to relevant policy development and real world solutions.
