by Sierra Francis
This year, in an interdisciplinary collaboration with evolutionary biologist Timothy A. Mousseau (University of South Carolina), UMBC environmental historian Kate Brown was awarded the highly competitive Collaborative Research Fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). According to ACLS, “The ten teams of scholars selected for funding cross boundaries of discipline, methodology, and geography to undertake new research projects that will result in joint publications.”
Both professors will co-author journal articles for the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident in April 2016, as well as a monograph that examines the relationship between scientific knowledge and the historical contexts of its production.
Why is this significant? To this day there is still no consensus on the impact the accident had. The collaborative project between Brown and Mousseau will explore how both knowledge and ignorance of Chernobyl’s disastrous effects have been produced over the last thirty years. ACLS states, “The researchers will analyze the historical trajectory of the funding, production of three decades of scientific research on Chernobyl from 1986 to the present, and in Fukushima from 2011 on, in order to describe what is known and debated about the impact of long term, low dose exposure to ionizing radiation on plants, animals, and humans.”
For more information please visit: https://www.acls.org/research/fellow.aspx?cid=0dd290b2-00a8-e411-9417-000c29879dd6
Congratulations Professor Brown!
