Eric Nost

I research how data technologies inform environmental governance. New kinds of data-generating sensors and data-synthesizing algorithms are becoming central to everyday life and may prove transformational at a policy-level as well. A key challenge for geographers in the coming years is assessing these technologies’ promise to help society solve sustainability issues related to food security, climate change adaptation, and ecosystem services conservation. This will be done by understanding their human dimensions - their design, use, maintenance, and social impacts - alongside other governance trends such as marketization and metrification. My work contributes to the fields of political ecology, science and technology studies, and digital geographies and is currently supported by several grants, including a SSHRC Insight Development Grant.

I teach undergraduate courses in nature-society geography and mapping as well as a graduate course in the department’s new Master of Conservation Leadership. I serve on the coordinate committee of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, where we bring people together to analyze publicly-available pollution data and track how the US federal government portrays climate change on the web.