The Milano School has extended invitations to visit campus to four final candidates for a tenure-track position of Assistant Professor in the Environmental Policy & Sustainability Management (EPSM) program.
The Milano School community is invited to attend each candidate’s academic job talk. Talks will be followed by a discussion with the candidate. Please see the bio for each candidate and the schedule for their job talks.
Job Talk Schedule
Monday, April 2, 2:00pm—3:00pm, Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th St., Room 404
“Reimagining the core: Social stratification, transportation planning, & urban redevelopment,” Lemir Teron, Ph.D.
Monday, April 9, 4:00pm—5:00pm, Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th St., Room 404
“Environmental Policy & Sustainability Management: Challenges and Possibilities,” Ranjan Datta, Ph.D.
Wednesday, April 11, 2:00pm —3:00pm, Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th St., Room 404
“Indigeneity and the Anthropocene Crisis: Bio-Cultural Diversity as a Path to Climate Justice,” Leonardo E. Figueroa-Helland, Ph.D.
Friday, April 13, 2:00pm—3:00pm, University Center, 63 Fifth Avenue, Room 304
“Indigenous Ecological Philosophies, Food Sovereignty and Justice,” Mariaelena Huambachano, Ph.D.”
Candidate Bios
Ranjan Datta is of South Asian Indigenous descent from Bangladesh. He has a strong commitment to and passion for Indigenous environmental sustainability, environmental management, Indigenous land rights, anti-racist theory and practice, decolonization, social and environmental justice, community gardens, and cross-cultural research methodology and methods. Dr. Datta’s publications have had a significant impact in his field. His recent book, Land-water Management and Environmental Sustainability, is forthcoming by the Routledge Press. This book is a vehicle for publishing up-to-date research on meanings and implications of Indigenous sustainabilities which focus on relationality, traditional knowledge, spirituality and hybridity. His two edited books titled Land, Responsibilities, and Reconciliation is under contract with University of Toronto Press and Reconciliation in Practice is under contract with McGill-Queen’s University Press. He is the founding chair of the Cross-Cultural Community Garden in Saskatoon, Canada, and has served as the Vice-President Academic at the Graduate Student Association, University of Saskatchewan, Canada. He has also long worked and advocated for the protection of Indigenous environment, land, sustainability, particularly with South Asian and North American
Leonardo E. Figueroa-Helland is Chair and Associate Professor of the Department of Politics, Justice & Global Studies at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. His work focuses on transformational alternatives to global crises. His transdisciplinary research combines critical global studies, indigenous and decolonial studies, political ecology, and intersectional critical approaches in an effort to articulate systemic alternatives that concomitantly foster sustainability and biocultural diversity through the advancement of social, environmental and climate justice, from the local to the global. His writings address a diversity of interlocked issues, such as climate change and global environmental politics, indigeneity and indigenous knowledges, ecofeminism and posthumanism, food justice and sustainable food systems, social movements and prefigurative politics, global migrations, energy geopolitics and energy transitions, among other global themes and challenges.
His work can be found in the Journal of World Systems Research (JWSR), Perspectives on Global Development and Technology (PGDT), Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature (STTCL), Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, the Journal of Critical Education and Policy Studies, the UNESCO Journal of Higher Education and Society, and the volume on Social Movements and World-System Transformation edited by Jackie Smith, Michael Goodhart, Patrick Manning and John Markoff. He is currently working on a book project titled Indigeneity and Planetary Politics, and an edited volume with Dr. Abigail Perez Aguilera titled Abya Yala Resurges: Indigenous Ecologies as Alternatives for the Anthropocene’s Planetary Crises.
Mariaelena Huambachano is an interdisciplinary Indigenous scholar at Brown University whose work centers on the intersections of Indigenous studies, public policy, and environmental and sustainable development, with a particular focus on comparative and transnational Indigenous knowledge systems of North America, Oceania, and Latin America. Through her “Right to Food Security/Sovereignty” project, Huambachano works with Indigenous farming communities such as Wai Ariki Onerahi (Food Forest) in New Zealand and Women of Choquecancha in the highlands of Peru. She utilizes a Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) theory and community-based research to understand the role of Indigenous knowledge systems to improve food security and climate justice policies. Mariaelena is an advocate for the recognition of Indigenous People’s rights within international spheres. She is an active participant in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and in the International Expert Group Meeting of Sustainable Development in Territories of Indigenous Peoples held at the UN headquarters in NYC. Huambachano holds a Ph.D in International Business and Sustainable Development from the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Lemir Teron holds an assistant professor appointment at the SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry. His current research evaluates issues related to urban sustainability, coastal communities and environmental justice. In addition to publishing work related to urban policy and energy use in scholarly and popular outlets, he has worked with a range of community and municipal scale actors and governments on said issues. He completed a postdoc at the NOAA affiliated Environmental Cooperative Science Center, where his research examined the mobilization of legacy pollution as a consequence of extreme weather events. Dr. Teron received his PhD from the University of Delaware’s Center for Energy & Environmental Policy.
