Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Caroline White-Nockleby is a PhD student in MIT’s doctoral program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS), which is co-sponsored by the History and Anthropology sections, and the Program in Science, Technology and Society (STS). White-Nockleby’s research centers on the shifting supply chains of renewable energy infrastructures. In particular, she is interested in the interfaces between policymaking, social dynamics, and tech innovations in the sourcing, manufacture, and implementation of energy storage technologies. She received a BA in geosciences and American studies from Williams College and an MPhil in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge, England. MIT SHASS Communications spoke with her for the series Solving Climate: Humanistic Perspectives from MIT about the perspectives her field and research bring to addressing the climate crisis.
Caption: Renewable energy must be collected, stored, and transported, says PhD student Caroline White-Nockleby. It requires financing, metals extraction, and the processing of decommissioned materials. . Not everyone stands to benefit equally from renewable energy s potentials, and not everyone will be equally exposed to its socio-environmental impacts.” Credits: Photo courtesy of Caroline White-Hockleby. Caption: Minimizing the localized burdens of renewable energy implementation will be complex, says White-Hockleby. I’m still in the planning phase of my own research, but I hope it will help surface, and offer tools with which to think through, some of these socio-environmental complexities. Caption: Almost everyone I talked to highlighted the importance of being part of a community of engaging in and through collaborative efforts, sa
After hearing the news that then President-elect Donald Trump had appointed a notorious climate change denier to lead the Environmental Protection Agency transition team in 2016, Nicholas Shapiro, an environmental anthropologist, penned an urgent email to a dozen or so fellow scientists.
He was worried that the EPA was about to be torn apart from the inside under Trump’s leadership. Others on the email thread were concerned that vital environmental data would be taken down from federal websites and destroyed. They’d just seen brutal attacks on science in Canada irreplaceable scientific records were dumped in the trash under conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and they feared that something similar could happen in the US. So Shapiro took a cue from his sister, an organizer for the Women’s March, and tried to bring researchers together to mount an offensive.