College of Arts and Sciences

Education:

• PhD, Energy and Resources, University of California, Berkeley
• BS, Science, Technology and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology
• BAE (Aerospace Engineering), Georgia Institute of Technology

Curriculum Vitae:

Bio:

I became interested in science and technology studies (STS) as an undergraduate engineering student in Georgia. When my flight performance professor off-handedly mentioned fuel dumping, I immediately wanted to know: Dumping on whom? With what consequences? And who gets to decide whether that’s okay?

As a graduate student in an interdisciplinary environmental studies program, I pursued questions about the human, political and environmental dimensions of science and technology. That led me to research at the intersection of STS and environmental justice studies, focusing on social inequality in the distribution of environmental hazards and decision-making power.

I came to Drexel in 2014 from the University of Washington-Bothell. I teach classes in Science and Technology Policy, Environmental Politics and Citizen Science. I also advise MS students in the Science, Technology, and Society and Environmental Policy Programs. My research group, the Fair Tech Collective, welcomes students from all levels and backgrounds who are interested in mobilizing science and technology to empower environmental justice communities. We use an apprenticeship model: students learn by doing alongside more experienced researchers.

Current research

My research on science, technology, and environmental justice has three parts that combine big ideas with real-world relevance:

• Empirical – I observe and analyze environmental controversies in order to understand the disconnects between how technical experts understand environmental issues and how people actually live with these environmental hazards.
• Ethical – I use political and ethical theory to envision ways that science and technology could better support environmental justice and more effectively empower communities.
• Experimental – I collaborate with scientists, engineers and community members to put theory into practice: we create technologies and design studies to address environmental justice issues, then we assess their impact.

For example, in one project I document the history of community-based air monitoring at oil refinery fencelines (empirical) while collaborating with community air monitoring activists to develop an interactive website (airwatchbayarea.org) and an app for exploring real-time air quality data in the Bay area (experimental).

Honors and Recognition

My book, "Refining Expertise: How Responsible Engineers Subvert Environmental Justice Challenges", was awarded the 2015 Rachel Carson prize for a work of social or political relevance by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S).

I received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for my project “Environmental Justice and the Ethics of Science and Technology.”

I currently serve as an elected member of the 4S Council (2015-2018), and on the editorial boards of Energy Research and Social Science and Citizen Science: Theory and Practice.

My commentary and analysis has been featured in The Washington Post, Contra Costa Times, Issues in Science and Technology, as well as in blogs such as PLOS One – Citizen Science and Backchannels.

I’ve been quoted in Grid Magazine, Public Source, and by the National Public Radio affiliate WHYY, as well as other publications focusing on energy, design, science and the environment.

Selected Publications:

Public Scholarship

• “A Missing Link in Making Meaning from Air Monitoring,” Backchannels (Society for Social Studies of Science Blog), April 16, 2016.
• “Technology that ‘works for us and not against us’,” The Science, Knowledge, and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association Blog, March 4, 2016.
• “Citizen Engineers at the Fenceline,” Issues in Science and Technology, Winter 2016: 72-78.
• “Is it good science? Activism, values, and communicating politically relevant science." Journal of Science Communication 14 (2015).
• “Groundbreaking Air Quality Study Demonstrates the Power of Citizen Science,” PLOS Blogs – Citizen Science, November 6, 2014.
• “Residents must be integral part of any monitoring system,” Contra Costa Times, September 5, 2014.

Books

• 2013 Gwen Ottinger, Refining Expertise: How Responsible Engineers Subvert Environmental Justice Challenges. New York: New York University Press.
• 2011 Gwen Ottinger and Benjamin R. Cohen, editors, Technoscience and Environmental Justice: Expert Cultures in a Grassroots Movement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Urban and Industrial Environments Series.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• 2017 Gwen Ottinger and Elisa Sarantschin, “Exposing Infrastructure: How Activists and Experts Connect Ambient Air Monitoring and Environmental Health,” Environmental Sociology 3(2): 155-165.
• 2014 Gwen Ottinger, Timothy Hargrave, and Eric Hopson, “Procedural Justice in Wind Facility Siting: Recommendations for State-led Siting Processes,” Energy Policy 65: 662 – 669.
• 2013 Gwen Ottinger, Richard Worthington, Warren Gold, Kern Ewing, James Fridley, Rodney Pond, and Brooke Kiener, “Interdisciplinary CBR with Disciplinary Expertise: Bridging Two (or more) Cultures in Undergraduate Projects,” Currents in Teaching and Learning 5(1-2): 4 – 16.
• 2013 Gwen Ottinger, “The Winds of Change: Environmental Justice in Energy Transitions,” Science as Culture 22(2): 222 – 229.
• 2013 Gwen Ottinger, “Changing Knowledge, Local Knowledge, and Knowledge Gaps: STS Insights into Procedural Justice,” Science, Technology, and Human Values 38(2): 250 – 270.
• 2012 Gwen Ottinger and Benjamin R. Cohen, “Environmentally Just Transformations of Expert Cultures: Toward the Theory and Practice of a Renewed Science and Engineering,” Environmental Justice 5(3): 158 – 163.
• 2011 Gwen Ottinger, “Environmentally Just Technology,” Environmental Justice 4(1): 81 – 85.
• 2010 Gwen Ottinger, “Constructing Empowerment through Interpretations of Environmental Surveillance Data,” Surveillance and Society, 8(2): 221 – 234.
• 2010 Scott Frickel, Sahra Gibbon, Jeff Howard, Joanna Kepner, Gwen Ottinger, and David Hess, “Undone Science: Charting Social Movement and Civil Society Challenges to Research Agenda Setting,” Science, Technology, and Human Values, 35(4): 444 – 473.
• 2010 Gwen Ottinger, “Buckets of Resistance: Standards and the Effectiveness of Citizen Science,” Science, Technology, and Human Values 35(2): 244 – 270.
• 2009 Gwen Ottinger, “Epistemic Fencelines: Air Monitoring Instruments and Expert-Resident Boundaries,” Spontaneous Generations 3(1): 55 – 67.

Book Chapters

• 2016 Gwen Ottinger, "Social Movement-Based Citizen Science." In The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science, edited by Darlene Cavalier and Eric B. Kennedy, 89-104. Tempe, AZ: Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes.
• 2016 Gwen Ottinger, Javiera Barandiarán, and Aya H. Kimura, “Environmental Justice: Knowledge, Technology, and Expertise,” pp. 1029 – 1058 in The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, 4th Edition, edited by Ulrike Felt, Clark A. Miller, Rayvon Fouché, and Laurel Smith-Doerr. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• 2011 Gwen Ottinger, “Rupturing Engineering Education: Opportunities for Transforming Expert Identities through Community-based Projects,” pp. 229 – 248 in Technoscience and Environmental Justice: Expert Cultures in a Grassroots Movement, edited by Gwen Ottinger and Benjamin R. Cohen. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• 2006 Gwen Ottinger, “Belief in ‘Cancer Alley’: Church, Chemicals, and Community in New Sarpy, Louisiana,” pp. 153 – 166 in Dispatches from the Field: Neophyte Ethnographers in a Changing World, edited by Andrew M. Gardner and David M. Hoffman. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.

Reviews

• 2014 Gwen Ottinger. “Absence and Expectation,” Response to Special Issue on “Absences,” in Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 3(8): 10-12.
• 2013 Gwen Ottinger, “Peopling Petrochemical America,” Review of Richard Misrach and Kate Orff, Petrochemical America, in Southern Spaces, 26 November 2013.
• 2012 Gwen Ottinger, Review of Edward Snajder, Nature Protests: The End of Ecology in Slovakia, in Political and Legal Anthropology Review 35(1): 147 – 148.