Guest speakers Dr. Jessica Varner, assistant professor of history in the Department of Landscape at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Mara Frielich, assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Brown University, will discuss “Why Multidisciplinary Climate Modeling Matters, Mara Freilich and Jessica Varner on Climate Changed.”
Abstract:
How do disparate climate and climate-related models come together to help us understand the climate crisis? Climate Changed (published by Columbia University Press last fall) considers this question by bringing together contributors from across disciplines, including atmospheric science, history, planning, hazard research, building science, and more—underscore the necessity of combining locally situated and transdisciplinary knowledge with climate science to navigate current and future cataclysmic changes. In this talk, co-editors Mara Freilich and Jessica Varner reflect on their relationship to climate work and the inspiration behind the volume.
Bios:
Dr. Mara Freilich is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (DEEPS) at Brown University. She studies the ways that physical oceanographic processes, including fronts and eddies, affect ocean microbial ecology, carbon cycling, and nutrient distributions. In addition, she works with community groups to mobilize climate science for environmental justice. Freilich uses a range of methods from numerical ocean models and theory to observational work at sea (including remote sensing and microbial genomics).
Dr. Jessica Varner is an Assistant Professor of History in the Department of Landscape at the University of Pennsylvania. She studies the intersections between synthetic chemicals, environmental governance, and chemical landscapes' histories. Her current book project, Chemical Desires, with the University of Chicago Press, uncovers the ties between corporate chemical firms and construction materials firms in the 20th century. Varner charts the legal and structural frameworks that put synthetic chemicals in buildings and made them indispensable to undergird the chemical industry's success in the U.S., Germany, and increasingly in international markets. She also tracks the resulting ecological catastrophe, as building products confronted a new molecular reality in synthetic chemicals, still at play today. She also works collectively with two non-profit organizations, the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) (A People’s EPA (APE) co-lead and steering committee member since 2019) and Coming Clean (since 2022), to turn research into action, centering justice in toxics histories and futures.