Perspectives on Energy Infrastructure, People, and Landscape
Part of the Zube Lecture Series
Content
About the Talk
This multi-disciplinary panel invites UMass Amherst faculty to share their perspectives in examining the interdependencies among energy infrastructure, people, and landscape. It will foreground human- and place-centered approaches to the energy transition, highlighting academic research and creative practices that seek more integrated relationships between infrastructures, the communities they serve, and the environments they shape.
About the Panelists
Camille Barchers, AICP, is an Assistant Professor of Regional Planning in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at UMass Amherst. She has practiced as a regional planner throughout Florida, the Southeast and mid-Atlantic, and previously taught in the Leadership Education and Development program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Professor Barchers' work examines how planners use technology and how it changes the way we engage with the public. Her research interests include community engagement via information & communication technology, big data applications for equitable long-range planning, and the interaction between land use & transportation planning.
Maitreyee Marathe is a Lecturer in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Program at the UMass Amherst Riccio College of Engineering. Professor Marathe's work explores optimization and control for power and energy systems, specifically in regards to modeling and simulation, hardware prototyping and field deployment, and community-engaged user-centric methods.
Regine Spector is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at UMass Amherst. Professor Spector teaches comparative political economy, development, energy and Central Asian politics courses. Spector's current research examines New England energy politics and electric grid reform, and the climate implications of our energy and water use practices. She works in partnership with other colleagues and students at UMass, and with multiple New England organizations seeking to advance climate-friendly and justice-oriented energy systems.
Margaret Vickery is a Lecturer in the Art History Department. Professor Vickery has written extensively on the architecture of women’s colleges. Most recently, she is the author of Landscape and Infrastructure: Re-Imagining the Pastoral Paradigm for the 21st Century, and (Translations) ARCHITECTURE/ART: WORKS OF SIGRID MILLER POLLIN (ORO Publications). She is active on campus committees that seek to establish collaboration and communication between disciplines across campus around environmental issues, and is Secretary/Treasurer of the newly formed “Women in Architecture” Affiliate group of the Society of Architectural Historians.
Eve Vogel is an Assistant Professor and the Geography Program Coordinator in the Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences at UMass Amherst. Professor Vogel's research investigates the human-environmental dynamics and histories of rivers. She focuses on river governance institutions and policy and their interaction with wide ecological and social processes and needs. Vogel is particularly interested in efforts to protect or restore the natural dynamics of large rivers while also meeting diverse human needs through multi-jurisdictional river basin management. She has focused for ten years on the Columbia River system, and is currently working on a book on a seventy-year history of regional Columbia River basin management. Vogel is also working toward a project on the Connecticut River, and also a broad comparative river governance project.