Faculty Research

Research Interests: Philip Camill's research interests include climate change and sustainability.

Research Interests: Connie Chiang studies modern United States history, with specialties in environmental history, the history of the American West, social history, and Asian American history. She is particularly interested in how shifting human interactions with and attitudes toward the natural world have transformed American society.

Research Interests: In addition to lecturing at Bowdoin, she currently is the Downeast Fisheries Partnership coordinator for Manomet. As coordinator, she aims to organize a collaborative effort to rebuild a diversified fisheries-based economy in Downeast Maine. Previously, Anne was an independent consultant focusing on marine research, policy and management. Her recent projects include assessment of the potential impacts of climate change on Maine’s lobster fishery and analysis of the mismatch between ecological and management boundaries in federal fisheries management programs.

Research Interests: Eileen Johnson teach courses that incorporate spatial analysis and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and remote sensing with a community based focus.

Research Interests: A historian of the United States, his research and teaching focus on the North American West, environmental history, urban history, social and cultural history, and the history of science, technology, and medicine.

Jill Pearlman teaches the history of architecture and urbanism.

Research Interests: Environmental impacts, including pollution and climate change, can dramatically affect the species we find in ecological communities and how these species interact. Human impacts can also trigger rapid evolutionary changes in populations strong enough to affect population dynamics, species interactions, and nutrient fluxes. In other words, anthropogenic global change can drive eco-evolutionary dynamics. I use a combination of field studies and laboratory experiments to explore these dynamics in natural populations, mainly zooplankton assemblages in lakes. Some of my work has looked at these trends over century and longer time scales using lake sediment archives as well as “resurrection” of diapausing zooplankton eggs. There is a presumption that rapid evolution occurs in response to strong selection pressure, resulting in local adaptation, and that these evolutionary responses may, in turn, influence species interactions. My research has shown that these dynamics may not be that simple, particularly in human impacted systems. ​

Research Interests: Shana Starobin's research centers on the politics of transnational business regulation and institutional innovation in global environmental governance. Shana's current book project--Alternatives to Transnational Sustainability Governance in the Global South—examines how producers of agricultural commodities from developing and emerging economies engage as active and innovative policy actors in the regulation and governance of natural resources, with comparative cases from Latin America.

Research Interests: Dr. Vasudevan's research is concerned with the fate of synthetic and naturally occurring organic and inorganic compounds. Her work focuses on the mechanisms by which organic and inorganic compounds interact with mineral surfaces in soil and aquatic environments. Central research issues include the study of sorption, desorption and coordination chemistry; surface complexation theory; mineral precipitation, dissolution, and weathering; and surface-assisted chemical transformation processes. Dr. Vasudevan and her group use a combination of controlled laboratory experiments, molecular and surface complexation modeling, and statistical tools in their research. Completed and current projects have emphasized the study of iron oxide rich soils, and pure phase minerals (iron, aluminum and titanium oxides, silica, and kaolinite) and include: Polar and ionic organic compound (pesticides/herbicides, pharmaceuticals) sorption-desorption in soils; Sorption of organic ligands with -OH, -COOH, -NH2, heterocyclic N groups at the metal-oxide water interface; Influence of phosphate on organic compound retention in soils; Fluoride sorption to soils and associated aluminum release. Sorption of approved tracers and their potential use as surrogates for pesticide fate and transport; Chemometric analysis of pesticide and pharmaceutical retention in soils.