Eric Nost

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Assistant Professor of Geography, Environment, and Geomatics | University of Guelph

Contacts

Projects

Welcome!

I research how data technologies inform environmental governance. New kinds of data-generating sensors and data-synthesizing algorithms are becoming central to everyday life and may prove transformational in policy too. A key challenge for geographers in the coming years is assessing these technologies’ promise to help society solve sustainability issues related to food security, climate change adaptation, and ecosystem services conservation. This will be done by understanding their human dimensions - their design, use, maintenance, and effects on society - alongside other governance trends such as marketization and metrification. It will involve understanding how these data systems came to be but also experimenting with them towards more just and equitable ends.

My work contributes to the field of political ecology and is currently supported by SSHRC funding. I teach undergraduate courses in nature-society geography and mapping as well as graduate courses in research methods and in Guelph’s Master of Conservation Leadership program. I serve on the coordinating committee of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), where we bring people together to analyze publicly available socio-environmental data and track the portrayal of climate change issues on the web.

Projects

Recruitment

I’m excited to hear from prospective grad students who are curious about the role data technologies play in environmental governance. Types of projects we might collaborate on include:

I am also looking for students to research the design of environmental governance datasets like Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory and to experiment in alternative uses of them. This research would inform ongoing policy discussions, including those around Canada’s Bill C-226 and the US’s Justice40 initiative, both of which seek to develop data infrastructures for advancing environmental justice. Students would have the opportunity to collaborate with the Environmental and Data Governance Initiative.

Prospective students should be interested in conducting interviews, document analysis, and/or surveys for their research, as well as working critically with data technologies themselves. I can offer training in communication skills - including mapping, data visualization, and public writing - and in the scholarly fields of political ecology, science and technology studies, and digital geographies. Former graduate students have gone on to work in academia and in the conservation and environmental NGO sectors.

I encourage interested candidates to email me with a brief statement of interest, an unofficial transcript, and a writing/research sample.

The Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics at Guelph and I aim to foster welcoming and collaborative spaces that value diversity and wellness. I encourage applications from all qualified individuals, including from justice-seeking groups and those underrepresented in higher education. More about the Department:

Webmapping and other programming projects

Collaborative

Personal

Selected Papers

Data governance and infrastructure

Environmental governance actors - states, corporations, conservation groups, farmers, and so on - struggle to get the information they want. There’s more and more data out there every day, but it’s often siloed. Even when it’s available, it’s not necessarily relevant and there typically isn’t the time or money to make sense of it. Governing nature, it turns out, means governing data. Who collects environmental data and manages environmental databases, and who pays for it all? These questions tend to crystallize in data infrastructures.

Digital practice and praxis

Decision-makers increasingly aim for what they call “data-driven” governance. But data doesn’t “drive” as much as it affords. It has to be learned from, through institutions that allow decision-makers to access expertise and communicate their expectations. Who are the users of digital technologies? What can they learn and do with their tools? How can data serve public ends, in and beyond the classroom?

Methods for political ecology

How can political ecologists sharpen or build new methods for understanding environmental governance?