New Books in Environmental Studies

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. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

  1. 22H AGO

    Geoffrey Jones and Sabine Pitteloud eds., "The Cambridge Companion to the History of Multinationals and Society" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

    Geoffrey Jones and Sabine Pitteloud present the latest research on the global history of multinationals and their impact on society and the environment. The Cambridge Companion to the History of Multinationals and Society (Cambridge UP, 2026) brings together leading international scholars, these essays survey key themes in our relationship with multinationals, from taxation and corruption to gender and the climate. Though often associated with large corporations like Apple or Nestlé, the contributors highlight the remarkable diversity in multinational strategies and organizational structures. They challenge the idea of an inescapable rise of multinationals by looking beyond the experience of Western countries and considering the effects of dramatic political shifts. Multinationals have often acted opportunistically, with their resilience carrying social costs through the exploitation of weak regulations, corrupt governments, inequalities, poor human rights, and environmental harm. This is an essential introduction to the historical role of multinationals for scholars and students as well as for policymakers and stakeholders navigating today's economic landscape. Presented by Paula de la Cruz-Fernández. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

    36 min
  2. 1D AGO

    Sezai Ozan Zeybek, "Animals, Justice, and the Politics of Violence: Shared Struggles in Turkey" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

    Animals, Justice, and the Politics of Violence: Shared Struggles in Turkey (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) by Dr. Sezai Ozan Zeybek explores the intricate relationship between humans and animals in the context of modern Turkish history. From drafted animals in war, to urban stray dogs and the role of cattle in the Kurdish conflict, the cases developed in this book show how animal lives are deeply entangled with human affairs, including complex social organisations such as families, states and nations. In doing so, the book exposes power dynamics, exploitative practices, and the discursive regimes that underpin development, nationalism, and urban growth. This book offers a timely exploration of human-animal relations, critically revising a number of concepts such as human rights, productivity, health and efficiency from a multispecies perspective. 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

    41 min
  3. 2D AGO

    Christiane Tristl, "Turning Water into Commodity: Digital Innovation and the Private Sector as Development Agent" (Bristol UP, 2025)

    In this episode, I am in conversation with Dr Christiane Tristl, an economic geographer interested in heterodox economic geography. Their scholarship focuses on big tech companies, digital technologies, marketisation of water and critical agri-food studies. We discuss her book Turning Water into Commodity: Digital Innovation and the Private Sector as Development Agent (Bristol UP, 2025). Dr Tristl’s book explores how private sector approaches and digital technologies open up remote regions to permanent arrangements of transnational market-based water supply beyond state sovereignty, which define their users as paying customers. By considering the socio-political realities of these market based interventions in the water sector, Dr Tristl’s research spells out for us the increasing influence of private corporations and philanthrocapitalist principles in development cooperation in both rural and peri-urban parts of Kenya.Abhilasha Jain is a social anthropologist trained at the London School of Economics. Her research interests lie at the intersection of caste, gender, spatial and climate justice, legal and critical anthropology. She is a qualitative researcher, curriculum designer and a feminist ethnographer. She has produced and co-hosted an academic podcast in India called AcademiaBTS, to bring graduates and PhD scholars to talk about their work, academic life in India, and to build a community that resonates with students in higher education.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

    42 min
  4. 4D AGO

    Lucy Lavers et al.," Adventurous Vents: A Journey through the Ventilation Shafts of Britain" (Penguin, 2025)

    At the heart of the modern world lie ventilation shafts. We may not notice them, but wherever there are tunnels, sewers, mines, car parks and energy stations under our feet, vents will be doing vital work keeping them cool and fume-free. Vents come in a wonderful and inventive variety of forms. Adventurous Vents: A Journey through the Ventilation Shafts of Britain (Penguin, 2025) by Lucy Lavers, Judy Ovens, Suzanna Prizeman celebrates them both in their own right as intriguing individual structures, and as an innovative way to tell the story of Britain's subterranean industrial development from the eighteenth century to the present day. Here are one hundred of the most interesting ventilation shafts, dotted around Britain, sometimes in the most surprising places. You'll find them masquerading as sculptures and small buildings, adorned with fine details or displaying their purpose with confidence. Whether you're inspired to take off in search of them, or just to admire them from your armchair, vents are fabulous objects. By putting them – perhaps for the very first time – centre-stage, Adventurous Vents celebrates a highly unusual but exciting architectural form. 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 hr
  5. 4D AGO

    Nicholas Beuret, "Or Something Worse: Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition" (Verso, 2025)

    The push for net zero has become a new arena for class conflict, where the powerful profit and the rest suffer. Existing policies won’t limit global heating to anything close to a safe level. Claims of sustainability disguise a zero-sum battle where the powerful profit and everyone else foots the bill. Green growth was supposed to bring increased wealth for all. Instead, work has been degraded, energy bills have soared, and the most basic necessities have become expensive and scarce. We need to disrupt green capitalism. In Or Something Worse: Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition (Verso, 2025), Nicholas Beuret follows those already fighting back through ‘don’t pay’ campaigns, blockades of fossil-fuel infrastructure, and community counter-planning. He shows we have the tools not only to stop climate change but to build a fairer future. Nicholas Beuret is a lecturer in environmental politics and economic geography at the University of Essex. With a background in both activism and academia, he explores the intersections of climate change, capitalism, and social justice. His work has been featured in the Guardian, The Ecologist, Open Democracy, and Undercurrents. Nicholas lives in the UK, where he continues to write, teach, and engage in environmental advocacy. Alec Fiorini is a PhD student at Queen Mary University London's Centre for Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP) researching the political economy of nitrogen fertilizer supply chains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

    1h 4m
  6. 5D AGO

    The Vet at the End of the Earth: Adventures with Animals in the South Atlantic

    The role of a resident vet in the remote islands of the Falklands, St. Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha encompasses many wonderful complexities: caring for the world’s oldest living land animal (a 200-year-old giant tortoise, denizen of the St. Helena governor’s lawn); pursuing mystery creatures and invasive microorganisms; relocating herds of reindeer; and rescuing animals in extraordinarily rugged landscapes, from subtropical cloud forests to volcanic cliff faces. Dr. Hollins’s tales of island vet life are not only full of ingenuity and astounding fauna—they are also steeped in the unique local cultures, history, and peoples of the islands, far from the hustle of continental life. Our guest is: Dr. Jonathan Hollins, who graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and has been a working vet for four decades. Since the mid-2000s, he has spent long periods as a senior vet overseas in the South Atlantic. He has written for the British national press and presented documentary features for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. He lives on St. Helena. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Doctors By Nature Just Like Family Living Night The Killer Whale Journals The Shark Scientist Endless Forms The Well-Gardened Mind Bugs: A Day in the Life My What-if Year The Climate Change Scientist At Every Depth Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! 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 hr
  7. 6D AGO

    Jennifer Boum Make, "Decolonial Care: Reimagining Caregiving in the French Caribbean" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

    Decolonial Care: Reimagining Caregiving in the French Caribbean (Rutgers UP, 2025) examines the relationship between the legacies of colonialism and the dynamics of caregiving that have emerged from the French Caribbean. Putting in dialogue postcolonial studies and care studies, this book elucidates how caring and uncaring have been historically shaped by colonialism and shows how media and narratives help develop decolonial approaches to care that sustain human life and livable environments. Guest Jennifer Boum-Maké is Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Georgetown University. In addition to her monograph, she has co-edited 2025’s Graphic Narratives of Resistance: Advocating for Representation and Social Justice in French-Language Bandes Dessinées. In addition to many journal articles and contributions to collected volumes, she serves on a number of editorial boards and is one of the founders of Kwazman vwa: New Paths in Caribbean literature, an online series hosting conversations with ultracontemporary Caribbean writers. Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean, with a book manuscript in progress on posthumanist ecological engagement in the surrealist movement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

    50 min

Ratings & Reviews

4
out of 5
23 Ratings

About

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. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

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