Four UA faculty members selected as Udall Center Fellows for 2017-18

Professor Brian Mayer is an environmental sociologist who has studied the social production of environmental-health risks and the contestations that emerge around environmental problems in the areas of science, policy, and medicine. His work has examined the role of community activism and participation in the identification and management of potential environmental-health risks. His pioneering scholarship has on resilience and disaster planning has clear policy relevance. His proposal for next year merges his interests in community disaster resilience, Native American resilience, and regional poverty reduction. For more on Prof. Mayer’s work, see https://sociology.arizona.edu/user/brian-mayer.

With a degree in law, a Ph.D. in Genetics, and working experience as a journalist, Professor Susan Swanberg brings a richly diverse background to her position. She is a science journalist whose Udall Center Fellows project is titled “Spinning Science: Science Journalism’s Role at the Interface of Science and Public Policy During the Birth of the Atomic Age.” In particular, she will be crafting mini-biographies of three 20^thcentury science writers. Prof. Swanberg’s site is at https://journalism.arizona.edu/users/susan-swanberg.

Professor Valerie Trouet, a dendrochronologist, also will be working on popularizing science, like Prof. Swanberg. Her proposed book, “Treestory: the history of climate, society, and forests as written in trees,” is arguably the first broad audience book on tree-ring research. Her work, to be published by Johns Hopkins Press, is a timely narrative intertwining dendrochronology, climate variability, ecosystems, and human societies. The site for Prof. Trouet’s lab is at http://trouetlab.arizona.edu/people.html.

Professor Melissa Tatum has devoted most of her career to studying how law and culture in Indigenous communities relate to cultural aspects of heritage, knowledge, appropriation, and property. Her work bridges the intersection of law, socio-legal studies, anthropology, intellectual property, environmental and natural resource protection, public lands, and religion. As a Fellow, she will work on “Spaces of Indigenous Justice” as a project. See Prof. Tatum’s site at https://law.arizona.edu/melissa-l-tatum.