October 20, 2025 3:00 - 4:00 pm ET 

This talk will explore how peasant environmental organizations use citizen science to demonstrate the harmful effects of plantations on humans and ecosystems and propose alternatives, and what challenges do plantations pose for citizen science. This talk will examine the water science initiatives of the Council of Communities of Retalhuleu (CCR), a food sovereignty and water rights alliance on Guatemala’s south coast. Nick’s work draws on Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives, plantation ethnographies, theories of the Plantationocene, and engaged ethnography to illuminate how citizen science can disrupt knowledge gaps and knowledge hierarchies that favor plantation-oriented development, and how plantations incite and frustrate citizen science.

Register for the Zoom presentation here. 

Presenter:

  • Nicholas Copeland, Associate Professor, Department of History, Virginia Tech 

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A recording will be made available on this page following the event

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