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Colloquium: Cleo Woelfle-Erskine
April 22, 2015 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm PST
SPEAKER
Cleo Woelfle-Erskine (MS’12)
PhD Candidate
Energy and Resources Group
U.C. Berkeley
TITLE
Watershed Collaborations: Entanglements on common streams
In the tradition of Barad and Haraway, I practice Science and Technology Studies (STS) “from the inside”, drawing on my own natural science training to inform the theoretical frameworks I develop. My interdisciplinary outlook is grounded in training, publication, and research in hydrology, aquatic ecology, and fluvial geomorphology, as well as in social science and STS. I am dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to studying human-nature interactions. This kind of approach can reveal why traditional adaptive management approaches often fail; this approach then generates new ways of producing knowledge that attend to tensions between science and local knowledge without dismissing either. In my dissertation research on juvenile salmonid survival in intermittent streams, I put this approach to the test. I developed my research questions in conversation with the local watershed council and agency scientists and local residents; conducted three seasons of field data collection, in collaboration with scientists from multiple agencies; initiated and developed citizen-science stream mapping and spring monitoring programs; and facilitated two workshops that brought all these participants together to explore different ways of knowing and investigating streams.