We are proud to celebrate OS Professor Sara Soderstrom for her instrumental role in the newly announced Environmental Justice + Humanities Hub—supported by a nearly $4 million grant from the Mellon Foundation. This pioneering project seeks to bring humanities into environmental justice, fostering holistic, community-minded approaches to environmental education.

“This new program will help undergraduate students take a humanistic approach to explore and analyze how people interact within their environments and an opportunity for LSA faculty to lead humanities-based projects and support hands-on learning for students by working with local communities and organizations,” says LSA Associate Dean for Social Sciences Barbra Meek.

OS Professor Soderstrom—also PitE director and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor—served as a co-investigator on the development team behind this project. “We have all kinds of technology that’s implemented poorly or it’s implemented inequitably,” Soderstrom states in the University Record. “If we’re not integrating a humanities perspective, then we’re not taking full advantage of the technology we have, let alone effectively co-creating any new solutions.”

In addition to preparing students to tackle complex environmental issues, Soderstrom also recognizes the hub’s ability to enact optimism and agency among students in the face of paralyzing climate anxieties. “We’re hearing so much about climate anxiety and environmental anxiety, where people have a sense of being frozen… The humanities give them a pathway to act,” says Sara Soderstrom. 

We are thrilled to celebrate Professor Soderstrom's continued leadership in environmental justice as well as the successful convergence of multiple disciplines with the creation of this new hub. As Matt Davenport of Michigan News states, "Bridging disciplines is never an easy task." However, it is a task we embrace in Organizational Studies. By examining problems through interdisciplinary lenses, we can foster truly innovative solutions, which is exactly what this hub will bring to our campus and the world.