This event is being presented remotely via Zoom.
Join us Wednesdays at 3:30 for our fall departmental seminar series. This week's guest is Eric Booth, PhD, Associate Scientist in Hydroecology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Title: "A hydrologist and a rhetorician,’ a story of learning how to collaborate on mixed-methods river research across the humanities and biophysical sciences"
Abstract: I will share a story of collaboration with my colleague Caroline Gottschalk and with communities in southwestern Wisconsin's Driftless Area to better understand the social-ecological processes that enhance resilience to flooding. Our mixed methods approach – including semi-structured interviews and biophysical monitoring and modelling – emphasizes open communication, draws on complementary (but not duplicative) skill sets, is grounded in ethics and care, is advanced through shared and sensible risk-taking, and responds flexibly and creatively to changing conditions in the landscape. We argue that 1) community-engaged interdisciplinary research is essential to working towards better community outcomes, 2) interdisciplinarity involves, honors, and emerges from not just different disciplines but different epistemologies, and 3) the best mixed methods work is synthetic in that it is greater than the sum of its parts and flexibly adapts to emerging problems and ethical connections to community members.
Visit the SWAC website for a full calendar of this semester's seminars.