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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.
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- Today42 min
Creatures of Story and Song: Tracing Britain's Lost Species with Lee Raye (Reaktion, 2026)
Lee Raye joins Jana Byars to talk about their new book, Creatures of Story and Song: Tracing Britain's Lost Species (Reaktion, 2026). Discover why a beaver was said to bite off its own testicles, why the baleen of a right whale was prized by medieval knights or why you should give your crush the gift of a great auk. Creatures of Story and Song pieces together evocative legends, poems and historical accounts from a thousand years of history to remember fourteen of Britain’s extinct creatures. More than merely charting their demise, this book explores the rich legacy that such creatures as the eagle, boar and wolf left on our cultural landscape, and sheds light on what it was like to live alongside them. As some, like the beaver, look set for a comeback, Lee Raye’s book offers curious readers charming context on these animals’ ancestors. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- Today48 min
Ecotexts in the Postcolonial Francosphere with Nsah Mala, Richard Watts and Giulia Champion
Through a postcolonial lens, Ecotexts in the Postcolonial Francosphere (Liverpool, 2025) explores the various ways in which francophone writers, visual artists and activists are responding to the global climate and environmental crises threatening the Earth today.The volume covers most of the francosphere: Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, South America and Polynesia. As well as discussing a range of environmental issues, from soil erosion to nuclear testing, it also considers ways in which francophone writers have become ecological activists. The ecotexts discussed include graphic novels, visual narratives, and zines alongside more conventional literary texts such as novels, short stories and poetry. The book seeks to decentre Belgium and France in francophone ecocritical scholarship while engaging in current debates in the field of ecocriticism, including the afterlives of Belgian and French colonialism and neo-colonialism in relation to climate change and environmental degradation, Blue Humanities, waste and toxicity studies, critical animal and plant studies, Indigenous peoples and their cultures and knowledges, climate-environmental (in)justice, and writerly/textual activism for climate and environment. It aims to widen the geographical scope of francophone ecocriticism by discussing a wide range of eco-themes that go beyond the segmentation and compartmentalisation found in other books in the field.Guest Nsah Mala is a poet, writer, children’s author, consultant, editor and translator, journalist-communicator, futurist and foresight practitioner, and interdisciplinary scholar working in English, French and Mbesa. Nsah currently works for the University of Cologne, Germany, as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Hub Coordinator of the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition.His research interests include comparative literature, anglophone and francophone African literatures, public and environmental humanities, literary activism/artivism, creative writing and foresight and futures thinking. He has published widely in these areas in peer-reviewed volumes and journals, including Ecozon@, Orbis Litterarum, Electronic Green Journal, Humanities, Peripeti and ASAP/J. His ongoing projects on ‘Wetland Time’ and ‘Congo Basin Futures’ are funded by the British Academy and the Next Generation Foresight Practitioner Fellowship, respectively. Among many distinctions, he has judged the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and won the Dubai Foresight Award in the Foresight for the Planet category.Guest Richard Watts is Associate Professor of French in the Department of French and Italian Studies, co-creator of the Environments, Cultures and Values minor, and founding director of the Translation Studies Hub at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of Packaging Post/Coloniality: The Manufacture of Literary Identity in the Francophone World (Lexington Books, 2005) as well as a series of articles on the intersections of francophone postcolonial studies and the environmental humanities. He is currently completing a book project titled Reclaimed Waters that considers how the pollution, privatization and manufactured scarcity of water are rapidly altering its ostensibly stable symbolic value in literature, cinema and other forms of cultural production in the Francosphere.Guest Giulia Champion is a Lecturer in Critical Ocean Studies at the University of Southampton. Her main research project is being developed in a monograph entitled The Political Construction of the Seabed: A Political Ethnography of the International Seabed Authority. This project explores the diplomatic processes of the United Nations body of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and the creation of a regulatory framework it is negotiating about deep-sea mining. The work explores this through a decolonial studies lens given the ISA’s location in Jamaica and its development of regulations about a new extractive frontier on the international seabed. Her work sits across the humanities and social sciences and uses arts-based methods for participatory public and policy engagement. She also collaborates on several projects including one on decarbonisation and electrical grids in Shetland, Orkney UK and Newfoundland, Canada; on Lithium extraction in Chile, and on safe swimming and access to green and blue spaces on the Isle of Wight, UK. She is an Associated Editor for the journal Environmental Humanities. She is the co-founder of the Deep Currents Collective, a group of activists and academics which holds a United Nation observer status at the International Seabed Authority. Her work has been published in (co-)authored articles in Bulletin of Latin American Research, The Journal of Energy History, Ocean and Society, Applied Energy, The Conversation, People and Nature and Comparative Law Journal of The Pacific.</p
- 2 days ago43 min
A Mellified Redemption? Learning to Live with a Pest Through Spotted Lanternfly Honey
Rosi Song of Gastronomica’s Editorial Collective hosts authors Eve Z. Bratman and Anna Purchase in a discussion of their newly published research article on lanternfly honey. Eve and Anna bring a social science perspective to their study of the spotted lanternfly. Noting the spotted lanternfly’s arrival to Pennsylvania a little over a decade ago and its spread in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, they highlight the complexity of insect invasivity, its impacts on local economies and ecologies, and the range of responses. Drawing from their research on bees and beekeeping, they share how a novel food product, honeydew honey from the spotted lanternfly, provided insight into the changing relationships between different species. The conversation details the qualities of lanternfly honey and the context that led to its commercial production, and concludes on a hopeful note for human-nature relations amidst uncertainty. “A Mellified Redemption? Learning to Live with a Pest Through Spotted Lanternfly Honey,” by Eve Z. Bratman and Anna Purchase, appears in the latest issue of Gastronomica (26.3). Read the article here.Eve Z. Bratman is an associate professor of Environmental Studies at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and author of the award-winning book Governing the Rainforest: Sustainable Development Politics in the Brazilian Amazon (Oxford University Press, 2019). She is currently writing a book on the politics of saving the bees.Anna Purchase studied Government and Environmental Studies at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and is now completing a Master’s degree in Environmental Management at the National University of Singapore.H. Rosi Song is a professor of Hispanic Studies at Durham University in the U.K., co-author of A Taste of Barcelona: The History of Catalan Cooking and Eating (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), and a member of the Editorial Collective at Gastronomica. She leads a Horizon Europe project on food, culture, and recipes titled RELISH (Reframing European Gastronomy Legacy through Innovation, Sustainability, and Heritage).Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies is published by the University of California Press. Quarterly issues are available in print and online.Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network. Subscribe to Gastronomica’s podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 2 days ago31 min
India, China, and Climate Change Governance: Leadership and Responsibility in the Asian Global South with Amit Ranjan and Agnieszka Nitza-Makowska (Routledge, 2026)
Can we expect leadership and responsibility from the Asian Global South in climate change governance? India, China, and Climate Change Governance: Leadership and Responsibility in the Asian Global South (Routledge, 2026) is a new book published by Routledge, edited by scholars from Singapore, Estonia, and Poland, explores this intriguing question by examining not only the domestic challenges Asian countries face in exercising leadership and assuming responsibility, but also the international cooperation and competition that shape their regional and global roles. Although the book is focused on India and China, its chapters also dedicate attention to the US, Europe and international organizations.Amit Ranjan is a Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, Singapore.Agnieszka Nitza-Makowska is a Research Fellow at the Asia Centre, University of Tartu, Estonia, and an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science and International Relations, Civitas University, Warsaw, Poland.The episode is hosted by Linas Didvalis, an Associate Professor at Centre for Asian Studies at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania.The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway).We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 3 days ago48 min
The Range of the River: A Riverine History of Empire Across China, India, and Southeast Asia with Iftekhar Iqbal (Stanford UP, 2025)
Six great Asian river systems have their origins in the Tibetan glacial region: the Brahmaputra, the Irrawaddy, the Salween, the Mekong, the Red and the Yangtse ('BISMRY'). Together they comprise the largest concentration of fresh water on the planet outside of the polar regions, and they support one third of humanity. In the age of imperialism, Western colonial powers dreamed of harnessing the economic potential of these great rivers, as if an ‘empire of men’ challenged a much older ‘empire of rivers’. This is the theme of Iftekhar Iqbal’s conceptually ambitious new book, The Range of the River: A Riverine History of Empire across China, India, and Southeast Asia, just published by Stanford University Press this year. This neo-Braudellian history of Asia’s great rivers encourages us to re-examine our thinking about the impact of imperialism, historical agency, Cold War regional categories of ‘South Asia’, ‘Southeast Asia’, and ‘East Asia’, into which the study of Asian history is usually divided, and even the humble mule, which played a crucial role in connecting this mountainous, watery region. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 4 days ago53 min
The Quake That Drained the Desert with Mary Elizabeth Reynolds (U Nebraska Press, 2026)
On May 3, 1887, an earthquake struck near the U.S.-Mexico border. Forty-three people died in Bavispe, Mexico; sixty miles north in Arizona, buildings swayed and a few collapsed, but no one was killed. Today, every person in southern Arizona lives with the underground aftermath of this earthquake: a drained aquifer. The estimated 7.4 magnitude earthquake created a sixty-two-mile rupture, the longest known surface rupture by a normal fault. The Quake That Drained the Desert (University of Nebraska Press, 2026) by Mary Elizabeth Reynolds tells the story of the men who investigated the earthquake: a doctor and photographer from Tombstone and an engineer from Mexico. Reynolds retells the terror of the survivors while exploring the ways the earthquake continues to shape water use and legacies in the greater Southwest. In this rigorous and gripping narrative, Reynolds unearths the aftermath of the quake, showing how it dramatically altered aquifers in southern Arizona and changed rivers that ensured the prosperity of two Mormon communities in southern Arizona and Mexico. With an eye to the present, this book asks us to consider how this underexamined quake marked the beginning of the water crisis in the region today, compacted by a century of groundwater pumping for agriculture, mining, and urban uses. As local governments and nonprofit organizations on both sides of the border now work to restore streams for wildlife habitat and flood control, they also hope to preserve water supplies for future generations. 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 5 days ago34 min
Do We Really Need To Choose Between Jobs and the Environment?
Host Licia Cianetti talks to Lorenzo Feltrin about his recent book Workers and the World: Fighting Ecological Crisis from Within (Verso, 2016). They discuss how the climate and ecological crisis often confronts workers with the impossible choice between the end of the month and the end of the world, but how this choice between jobs and environment is not as zero-sum as it is usually represented. Lorenzo explains how people living near toxic industries often lose both jobs and the environment, how this takes different forms in different parts of the world, and how new solidarities can emerge that could save livelihoods and nature.Guest:Lorenzo Feltrin is a post-doctoral researcher at the University Ca’ Foscari in Venice, working on a Marie Curie Global Fellowship titled "Labour and Ecology in an International Perspective: Porto Marghera in the Phosphates Archipelago". Between 2021 and 2024 he worked at the University of Birmingham.Presenter:Licia Cianetti is Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham and Founding Deputy Director of CEDAR. She is the Principal Investigator of an upcoming research project on “Resisting Inter-Scalar Authoritarian Networks and Coalitions” (funded by the EU under Horizon Europe grant no. 101286676).The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.Transcript here Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 1 weeks ago35 min
Climate Hegemony: Confronting the Politics of Environmental Impasse with Laurie Parsons (LSE Press, 2026)
Climate action is at an impasse. Its political opponents are stronger than ever, its advocates powerless. Almost every major government and corporation expresses their commitment to tackling climate change, yet decades of discussion, governance, and action have failed to stop carbon emissions advancing to record annual levels. How has so little been achieved for so long on such an urgent issue? In Climate Hegemony: Confronting the Politics of Environmental Impasse (LSE Press, 2026), Laurie Parsons shows how the architecture of environmental thinking has been locked into ineffective pathways. We don’t need to be coerced into inaction on climate, because our understanding is constrained by metaphors, rhetoric and assumptions so embedded we have long since ceased to see them. To confront this, Climate Hegemony brings us a human’s-eye view of the climate crisis, building up from lived experience to reveal the interests and politics that underpin the impasse. Drawing on almost two decades’ research at the frontline of global development in Cambodia, Parsons reveals the chasm between how climate change appears in a newspaper, or a policy bulletin, and how it appears to those immersed in the places it affects. From this perspective, the limitations of current environmental thinking become clear, but so too do a great many alternatives. In this powerfully argued work, Parsons set out how, if we were to rethink the perspective from which we understand climate change, we can build knowledge from and for marginalised communities, from the ground upwards, challenging the impasse and creating new pathways to address and adapt to the social impacts of climate breakdown. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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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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