Bridging the Divides: Mimi Sheller & Kevon Rhiney on Post-disaster futures in the Caribbean

Wednesday, January 17th, at 1 PM ET

This event is part of a speaker series organized by Bridging the Divides, a collaborative, interdisciplinary study group that seeks to  develop a new vocabulary and conceptual pathways for theorizing and reimagining Puerto Rico and its future.

Mimi Sheller, Ph.D., is the Inaugural Dean of The Global School at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Massachusetts. Sheller is an interdisciplinary scholar in the fields of mobilities research, Caribbean studies, and island climate adaptation. She is currently Co-Principal Investigator for the NOAA-CAP Caribbean Climate Adaptation Network (2022-2027) and PI for a related NOAA-BIL award on Improving Engagement Methods for Coastal Resilience and Reducing Climate Risk (2023-2027). She has published more than 150 articles and book chapters, and has authored and co-edited fifteen books, including Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene (Duke UP, 2020); Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes (Verso, 2018); Aluminum Dreams: The Making of Light Modernity (MIT Press, 2014); and Citizenship from Below: Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom (Duke UP, 2012).

Kevon Rhiney, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Human-Environment Geography at Rutgers University – New Brunswick. He is also the 2023-2024 Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and Humanities at the High Meadows Environmental Institute with visiting appointments in the Departments of African American Studies and Anthropology. Current research reflects new and growing interest in exploring the ways recent natural disasters in the Caribbean and the ensuing recovery efforts have become intertwined with underlying issues of uneven development, inequality, and ongoing post/colonial struggles. His work aligns with the growing interdisciplinary field of critical disaster studies that attend to the ways in which natural disasters are often socially produced and how the responses to these events are inherently political and contested.  Rhiney’s research has been published in a number of interdisciplinary journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(PNAS),Annual Review of Environment and Resources (ARER), Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Geoforum, and World Development. Various aspects of his research have also been featured in the print media, including the New York Times, Irish Times, and the National Post (Canada).