Photo: Here I was out with a group of teenagers at an urban park in Toronto, in 2020 (at a time when groups of up to 25 could meet outside, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic). We had just planted about 100 plants in an area beside the path, and had found some dead wood to try to make a barrier between the path and the planted area. (Photo copyright Tyler J. Bateman).
My research has developed in several major themes, listed here.
Learning to care about nature I have worked with nature organizations who provide nature-based education to children, teenagers, and adults. My research with this groups asks about how and when programming that connects people with nature contributes to mental health and environmental stewardship. I also study the life histories of people who connect with nature to understand identity and important life events that help people understand their connection with nature. This theme is the subject of my doctoral dissertation.
Invasive Species I work with the Global Urban Biological Invasions Consortium (https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/projects/gubic/) and colleagues in sociology in a project that assesses the cultural meanings in government policy about invasive species. This project uses word embedding, a form of computational text analysis.
Discourses of the meat commodity chain With Shyon Baumann and Josée Johnston (see Publications), I demonstrated how frames related to meat are discussed on blogs and newspapers. This paper builds a theoretical and methodological framework for understanding complex, ambiguous, cultural objects like meat that encompass many benign and risky qualities (an ambiguity also observable with invasive species). One of the main findings in this article is that in the public discussion of meat, more critical ideas (about climate change, pollution, health, etc.) are present in blogs than in mainstream, for-profit, newspapers. In this article, I used the computational text analysis method of topic modelling to analyze text data.
Decolonization and Reconciliation at Canadian Environmental Organizations I work with several community organizations (including the Council of Canadians and Grandmother's Voice), and both Indigenous and settler staff at these organizations, on a community-based research project about how organizations are putting into place reconciliation and decolonization initiatives in Canada. This work is in its earlier stages, with a pilot study completed in 2023 (see Publications).
Older Adults and Climate Change I work with the organization Seniors for Climate Action Now on mobilizing more older adults to work toward more sustainable societies and in shaping organizational change for social justice. As with the work on decolonization and reconciliation, this project is in its earlier stages, with a pilot study completed in 2023 (see Publications).