Category Archives: Speakers

Environmental communication symposium and workshop hosting Latin American scholars ends in collaboration

BY ANNA BARNES, SHEALYN PAULIS

Symposium participants

From Mon. March 31, to Wed. April 2, 2025, Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) hosted the Counter-Hegemonic Environmental Discourses in Latin American Contexts Symposium and Workshop. The event featured a full day of panels where visiting Latin American scholars representing eight countries presented their research on environmental communication.

Latin American perspectives are often marginalized from international academic spaces. Systematic barriers prevent researchers from being included in global conversations, such as language, translation difficulties and emphasis on work produced in the Global North. Additionally, the availability of funding is a stark contrast for academics in the Global South compared to their northern counterparts. These barriers have made scientific inclusion and cooperation between the Global North and South challenging.

The event highlighted research and scholarship from Latin America, with discussions centered on the communication of environmental health issues, sustainability, environmental journalism, and hegemonic perspectives. It also explored the audiences and sources of environmental communication, with particular attention to Indigenous and marginalized communities. Continue reading

Counter-Hegemonic Environmental Discourses in Latin American Contexts Symposium and Workshop

From Monday, March 31, to Wednesday, April 2, Michigan State University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) and the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism will host the Counter-Hegemonic Environmental Discourses in Latin American Contexts Symposium and Workshop. The event invites researchers, staff and students to join as 14 scholars representing eight Latin American countries discuss their research in environmental communication.

The symposium and workshop will allow scholars to share their perspectives from a critical and decolonial perspective, one rarely highlighted in western publications. The symposium aims to explore the obstacles researchers face in their fields, such as language barriers, hegemonic perspectives and paywalls.

Faculty, staff and students are invited to attend the full-day symposium where they will gain valuable insights from diverse, multicultural perspectives and have the opportunity to engage with international scholars. By fostering these connections, the MSU community can broaden its academic sourcing and open students to new, underrepresented ideas.

Among the featured presenters is Ana Claudia Nepote, a researcher and full-time professor based out of the city of Morelia in México. Nepote focuses on issues related to science-society interactions, environmental communication and communication for environmental sustainability. Her panel will be discussing cultural diversity in sustainability communication . Continue reading

Bolivian journalists explore environmental reporting innovations at Knight Center for Environmental Journalism workshop

By Bruno Takahashi & Iasmim Amiden dos Santos

In a bid to tackle pressing environmental issues in South America, 12 Bolivian journalists gathered at Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism from October 28 to November 1. The workshop, “Innovations in Environmental Journalism for a Complex World,” aimed to equip reporters with new skills and insights to enhance environmental coverage in Bolivia and across the region.

Erika Bayá Santos, Red Ambiental de Información during the workshop

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Energy transition requires fight against disinformation, search for common ground, energy policy expert tells Knight Center audiences

By Clara Lincolnhol

Climate of Contempt cover. Image: Columbia University Press

“Be curious, not judgemental.” This quote from the popular comedy-drama “Ted Lasso” is how a professor of energy law recommends we approach conversations about energy policy and politics.

“We can be a force that fights against demonization and the nastiness online and instead ask questions to people who introduce an idea that’s different or contradicts what we believe,” said David Spence, a professor of energy law at the University of Texas Austin and author of “Climate of Contempt.”

Spence was at the MSU School of Journalism where he spoke in an environmental journalism class and at a public seminar sponsored by the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.

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