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New Books in Environmental Studies: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Marshall Poe
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.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 5 days ago1h 3m
Sierra Bainbridge and James Kitchin, "Seeking Abundance: Design, Ecology and a Flourishing Planet" (Axio, 2026)
Regenerative design is a way of building that heals our planet and our communities by halting biodiversity loss, reversing climate change, and improving social equity. Over the last decade, the nonprofit design practice MASS has proven that we can yield positive social, environmental, and economic results through a series of projects in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Seeking Abundance : Design, Ecology and a Flourishing Planet (Axio, 2026) argues for reducing the harm our building activities wage in our environments and that we can—and must—help people and the planet thrive together. The proof? MASS's projects represent a coherent and replicable philosophy that responds to local ecologies and transforms lives. This groundbreaking new book, co-edited by Sierra Bainbridge and Alan Ricks, examines how the power of multidisciplinary collaboration, regenerative practices, and community engagement can actively contribute to a healthier, more harmonious world. The evidence of these works can be found in three case studies, focusing on The Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture, The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, and The Ilima Primary School. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
- 6 days ago1h 24m
Andrew Demshuk, "The Filthiest Village in Europe: Grassroots Ecology and the Collapse of East Germany" (Cornell UP, 2026)
The Filthiest Village in Europe: Grassroots Ecology and the Collapse of East Germany (Cornell University Press, 2026) traces how a community shrouded by "industrial fog," at the brink of gaping coal pits, became a symbol that galvanized grassroots ecology—campaigns by diverse local actors that exposed environmental and economic crises East Germany's political system could not resolve. Notoriously known by the late 1980s as "the filthiest village in Europe," Mölbis suffocated downwind from the massively polluting carbochemical Espenhain plant. Applying a myriad of private collections, interviews, and untapped archival sources, Andrew Demshuk reveals how pastors, parents, officials, inspectors, workers, and spies negotiated ossified party structures whose inability to reform was showcased by ever-worsening environmental conditions. After peaceful protests a few kilometers north in Leipzig triggered a revolution, pre-1989 grassroots players launched innovative reconstruction programs with financial and organizational expertise from West Germans. Together, they transformed Europe's filthiest village into a healthy place to live and imbued it with new symbolism, turning it into a sign of hope. The political will and social engagement that saved Mölbis and rejuvenated the surrounding wasteland can inform how to revitalize other postindustrial "filthy places" in our world today. Andrew Demshuk (he/him) is a Professor of History at the American University in Washington D.C. His research focuses on post-1945 German and Polish history with an emphasis on how grassroots human stories can help to explain big political developments. Jenna Pittman (she/her), is a PhD student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
- 1 weeks ago24 min
Gregory Kenicer, "Scottish Plant Names: An A–Z" (Birlinn, 2026)
Names are incredibly powerful things and are a crucial part of the way we see and classify the world around us. Plant names are especially fascinating in this respect. Some are simply descriptive or speak of ancient uses and remedies, whilst others have religious origins or roots in wider folklore, and some are very recent inventions. Scottish Plant Names: An A–Z (Birlinn, 2026) by Dr. Gregory Kenicer introduces almost 300 plant names to showcase the enormous variety of Scotland’s native species. It includes English, Gaelic and Scots (Including dialect) names, revealing the country’s diverse linguistic history. Short descriptions, together with historical and cultural information in each entry, make this book an ideal companion for all those with an interest in Scotland’s rich botanical tradition. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
- 1 weeks ago55 min
Daniela Soto-Hernández, "Lithium Extraction in Chile: Ontological, Ecological and Economic Dimensions" (Routledge, 2025)
Lithium Extraction in Chile: Ontological, Ecological and Economic Dimensions (Routledge, 2025) is a new book from Dr Daniela Soto-Hernández, a Social Anthropologist currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sussex. In this book, published with Routledge, Dr Soto-Hernández uses ethnographic methods during her intensive fieldwork in Chile, specifically in and around the Atacama Desert, to take a relational view on lithium mining in the region. Chile is the largest and oldest producer of lithium in South America and the second largest in the world, accounting for nearly 32% of the global supply in 2022. Dr Soto-Hernández’s book, Lithium Extraction in Chile, is a crucial and new way of seeking to understand not only lithium, but the worlds that are created around the resource; inclusive of sacred, indigenous relations, the ubiquitous role of water, the discursive and practical dimensions of lithium production, and the social tensions manifest throughout these processes. Dr Soto-Hernández first explores the ways in which the Chilean Atacama Desert has been constructed as a ‘desolate-scape’ through mechanisms and relations of coloniality and capitalism, to render the territory as lifeless and only appropriate for extraction. Then, and by using the rich fieldwork central to the book, Dr Soto-Hernández puts forward the notion of ‘desertscape’ to express the ways of living for indigenous peoples in the territories of the Atacama Desert, such as for the Lickanantay peoples. This paints a direct contrast to the colonised view of the desert as a ‘desolate-scape’, which serves capital, and instead expresses the abundance, world-making, and life-giving properties of the landscape as ‘desertscape’. This relational view of the Atacama Desert, inclusive of non-people, people, and the sacred, is then used to understand the role of lithium, brine, and water extraction in this crucial territory, with implications for a truly transformative energy transition. Elliot Dolan-Evans is a sessional lecturer and tutor in law at Monash University and RMIT. His research investigates the political economy of global capitalism, forms of international governance, and questions of war and peace. His first book, Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF and the Conflict in Ukraine, is now out with Bristol University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
- 2 weeks ago58 min
Kate Brown, "Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present and Future of the Self-Provisioning City" (W. W. Norton, 2026)
Kate Brown, Distinguished Professor in the History of Science at MIT joins Michael Stauch to discuss her new book Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present and Future of the Self-Provisioning City (W. W. Norton, 2026) on the 300-year history of urban gardening, from feudal England to the Paris Commune, to Berlin’s green shantytowns, to contemporary Amsterdam, Chicago, and beyond. Equal parts history, memoir, and manifesto, Brown’s book weaves in her own gardening experience while exploring the political and practical, painting a picture of the necessity of self-provisioning in an increasingly chaotic world. Highlights include: How “tiny gardens” grew as a social practice among English peasants following the enclosure of the commons; The politics of “tiny gardens,” including the difference between a “gardening” state and a gardeners state; How Black “tiny gardeners” in DC’s East of the River neighborhood transformed structural racism into vegetable-powered wealth; A short-but-scathing review of Yuvel Harari’s Sapiens; How small changes to local ordinances in cities might allow us to reimagine a world of abundance amid contemporary fears of scarcity and instability. Guest: Kate Brown is Distinguished Professor in the History of Science at MIT and author of four previous prize-winning books, including A Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. She currently plants her gardens in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Vermont. Host: Michael Stauch is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
- 2 weeks ago55 min
Robert Rouphail, "Cyclonic Lives in an Indian Ocean World: Environment, Disaster, and Identity in Modern Mauritius" (Ohio UP, 2026)
In a world marked by increasingly destructive ecological and meteorological upheavals, Cyclonic Lives in an Indian Ocean World: Environment, Disaster, and Identity in Modern Mauritius (Ohio UP, 2026) by Dr. Robert Rouphail offers a historical analysis of how these catastrophes shape people’s understanding of themselves, their collective history, and their relationship to the institutions that govern them. An examination of cyclonic disasters in the multiethnic Indian Ocean island of Mauritius throws into stark relief how deep histories of diasporic identity formation, of imperial governance, and of the informal practices of racial difference making graft onto how everyday people interpret these moments of loss and the futures that emerge in their wake.Cyclonic Lives shows that disasters are not only events; they are also processes through which people evaluate and rethink the most elemental social and cultural categories that give meaning to their lives. Beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing until the early postcolonial era, this book tracks, for example, how Mauritians of African descent integrated these disasters into broader collective histories and memories of the Indian Ocean slave trade, how Hindu Indo-Mauritians understood cyclones’ ecological effects as material elements to be accounted for in a broader Hindu diasporic space, and how the late colonial and early postcolonial state built infrastructures—material, conceptual, and financial—to mitigate the threats posed by these storms and ensure their own long-term durability.The increasing political, social, and economic instability that climate change has already triggered demands that humanists develop analytical geographies and methodologies that shed light on how power can modulate in asymmetrical ways at moments of crisis. If there is one central takeaway from this historical study of this small island in a big ocean, it is that catastrophic events are not things that merely happen to people; they are processes that remake them. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
- 3 weeks ago34 min
Silvia Danielak, "Peace Infrastructures: How UN Peace Operations Build Roads, Bridges, and Solar Farms in the Pursuit of Sustainability" (MIT Press, 2026)
Roads, bridges, a renewable power plant, and an electricity grid: UN peacekeepers might be unusual infrastructure builders, but they’re certainly not unambitious. Since the beginning of the UN’s peacekeeping activities after the end of World War II, the Blue Helmets have cemented streets, constructed bridges, and dug wells in conflict zones. But how did the military arm of the world’s primary diplomatic forum become involved in such activities in its quest for peace, and with what consequences? Peace Infrastructures: How UN Peace Operations Build Roads, Bridges, and Solar Farms in the Pursuit of Sustainability (MIT Press, 2026) by Dr. Silvia Danielak analyzes the turn to ever-more-complex infrastructure projects, from early road building via urban community projects to the commissioning of entire renewable power plants, in the context of an evolving understanding of peace “problems” and solutions. Tracing the global travel of policies, technologies, and expertise, Dr. Danielak investigates how the shift toward risk management, legacy, and climate security was driven by, and materialized in, conflict zones, shaping the very idea of peace.The book critically engages with the UN’s ambition to insert itself in the sustainable development of the countries it seeks to assist, arguing that we need to consider peace operations’ spatial, urban, and material ways of engagement—especially in the face of mounting climate risks. Infrastructure is poised to take a more prominent position within peace operations, but a more nuanced understanding that recognizes its opportunities, as well as its potential for violence, is required. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
- 3 weeks ago51 min
Peter S. Soppelsa, "Paris After Haussmann: Living with Infrastructure in the City of Light, 1870–1914" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2026)
Modern Paris is often hailed as a capital of urban infrastructure. Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s rebuilding of Paris in 1853–1870, branded “Haussmannization,” helped define urban modernity for cities worldwide. But even as infrastructures expanded and modernized, some Parisians were left behind: as late as 1928, 18 percent of houses still lacked direct sewerage. Haussmannization often hid infrastructures behind walls and floors, under streets, or in peripheral districts. In the forty years after 1870, a period that Dr. Peter Soppelsa calls “secondary Haussmannization,” Parisians inverted them—revealed their hidden components to scrutinize their workings and costs for society, environment, and health—and in turn politicized them. Drawing on French government archives, engineers’ maps, the illustrated press, and a collection of over 100 photographic postcards, in Paris After Haussmann: Living with Infrastructure in the City of Light, 1870–1914 (U Pittsburgh Press, 2026) Dr. Soppelsa charts the diverse embodied, emotional, and everyday experiences of living with expanding urban infrastructures—streets, housing, tramways, subways, the water supply, sewers, and rivers—in Paris from 1870 to 1914. Parisians learned that infrastructures were not simply technical solutions for the social and environmental problems of city life but could also bring about new dangers and dependencies. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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About New Books in Environmental Studies
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.
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