Erin Brock Carlson and Martina Angela Caretta

Erin Brock Carlson’s research centers the relationships between place, technology, and power, focusing on how communities work together to address complex public problems through communication and community organizing. Her current projects include documenting the experiences of West Virginians affected by natural gas pipeline development; advocating for access and distribution of ethically collected and curated public health data; and developing place-based methods for community engagement pedagogy. Erin is also working on a larger project about the importance of place-based knowledges to Appalachian organizing and activism in the midst of regional economic transition, drawing from a yearlong participatory photovoice project with a group of community organizers. She teaches courses in professional, technical, and multimedia writing, as well as Digital Humanities and accompanying research methods. Her specializations include: Technical and Professional Communication, Public and Digital Rhetorics, Participatory Research Methodologies, Community Engagement and Service Learning, and Rhetorical Theory. Dr. Martina Angela Caretta is a feminist geographer researching human-environment interactions, specifically investigating the human dimensions of water. She is interested in waterscapes and how they are modified, reified and used by people and in turn, how local and indigenous communities, adapt their norms and customs in the face of climate change. She has also researched that role that migration and conflict play in (mal)adapting to water insecurity. I have conducted research in Kenya, Tanzania, Ecuador, Venezuela and Appalachia in the USA. Her work is based on participatory and decolonizing research methodologies, which demand the sharing of research results with participating communities. She has disseminated my research in different formats e.g. workshops with research participants and booklets in local languages. She serves as a Coordinating Lead Author of the 2021 6th United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report. I am leading the chapter on Water in the 2nd Working Group on Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation. She is also interested in the neoliberal turn of the academia and its consequences for early- career female faculty and researchers. She is a member of the International Geographical Union Gender Commission Steering Committee.