Nominees for the Nominating Committee 2024
The Nominating Committee has four members, including at least one member from outside the Executive Committee, each elected for two-year terms. One half of the members are elected at the annual meeting each year. The Chairperson is an ex-officio member of the Nominating Committee. The Nominations Committee seeks to ensure a slate representative reflecting the diversity within the section, including various disciplines, intellectual and methodological stances, ages and sexes, institutions, and geographic locations. It solicits nominations from the section membership by e-mail and presents to the membership by e-mail for a vote the names of one or more nominees for each vacant position at least two weeks prior to the annual meeting. Those who have not voted by e-mail may vote in person at the annual meeting.
Below are the bios for those running for the Nominating Committee (2 positions/3 candidates):
Devon Cantwell-Chavez: Devon Cantwell-Chavez is a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa. She was a member of the ESS Outreach Committee from 2022-2024 and is currently the chair. During this time, Devon supported the ESS Mentorship Week through recruitment and matching of mentors and mentees, designed social media campaigns to promote the work of members, and co-led the ESS Mentoring Roundtable. If elected, Devon will use a variety of outreach strategies to diversify the pool of candidates for ESS leadership with regard to geography, institution, career status, gender, race, as well as other relevant factors.
Sylvain Maechler: I hold a PhD in Political Science from the University of Lausanne entitled “Accounting for Nature: Risk, Uncertainty, and the Global Political Economy of the Ecological Crisis”. I recently started a Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for a research position at the University of Ottawa, where I am also teaching a course on global environmental politics. I am also research fellow at the University of Lausanne. My interdisciplinary PhD research focused on the transnational politics of natural capital accounting and has been published in various journals. My current postdoctoral research explores how financial actors consider the loss of biodiversity as “nature-related risks”. My research therefore lies at the intersection of global environmental politics and international political economy, but I consider myself first and foremost an environmental scholar. I am applying for the ESS Nominating Committee because, at recent ISA conferences, I found myself in a great network of inspiring scholars in this section, with whom I had the great pleasure of sharing my research. While I benefitted a lot from the events organized in the ESS, I also want to give something back by participating in the life of the section, being more closely involved with its members, and fostering collaboration with them. I also think that my interdisciplinary background in political science, economic geography and economic sociology would be a perfect match for this position.
Sebastian Rubiano-Galvis: I am a researcher and educator working at the intersection of critical environmental social sciences and science and technology studies. I am an Assistant Professor in the International Studies Department and the Latin American Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. I am also a Research Affiliate of the Human Contexts and Ethics of Data Program at UC Berkeley’s College of Computing, Data Science, and Society. My work studies the politics of environmental knowledge, technology, and data in Latin America. I draw on concepts from political ecology, science and technology studies, and global environmental politics and use interpretive social science methods and qualitative analysis. My current research includes projects on the “datification” of environmental policy and a book project on the history and politics of mercury amalgamation in gold mining in Colombia and the broader circulation of said technique in the Americas over the last three centuries. My teaching spans courses on global environmental politics, environmental and climate justice, environment and society, and the social and political dimensions of science, technology, and data. As a Latin American scholar working at a US university and researching Latin American environmental science and politics from a multidisciplinary perspective, I can contribute to the Nominating Committee’s goal of ensuring that nomination processes recognize, celebrate, and benefit from the diversity within the section, along the lines of disciplines, intellectual traditions and methodological stances, ages and sexes, institutions, and geographic locations. Moreover, as a junior environmental justice scholar in an international studies department, serving in the Nominating Committee would be a unique opportunity to learn more about the field and take steps towards a deeper and long-term engagement with the section and its goal of upholding diversity, pluralism, and representation.
For information on current officers and ESS governance, please visit: https://www.isanet.org/ISA/Sections/ESS/Leadership ?
