The Center for a Sustainable Water Future is hosting an interdisciplinary water-themed lecture series this year with the lectures delivered via Zoom. The first speaker is Dr. Caroline Gottschalk Druschke, associate professor of English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Druschke will be presenting her talk titled “Living Well with Floods: Connecting public engagement, storytelling, and biogeochemical research to support freshwater systems,” at 3 p.m. on Thursday, October 15. This event is free and open to the public, and those interested can register here.
Druschke builds from her cross-disciplinary training in rhetorical studies, ecological science, and community-based learning to investigate the logics, practices, and consequences of freshwater restoration and management. With a particular focus on southwestern Wisconsin’s flood-prone Driftless Area, she works closely with a variety of community-based organizations to conduct field-based, mixed methods research to support community-level flood resilience.
Druschke also directs an interdisciplinary group of researchers known as Headwaters Lab. The organization works at the intersection of public engagement and freshwater ecosystems. Through a solid foundation in the study of rhetoric, they build critical theory and conduct social and ecological research about stream restoration, flooding, watershed-based agricultural conservation, and fisheries management. Headwater Labs take a community-based, equity-informed approach to better understand and intervene in dynamic, multispecies aquatic systems.
The second installment in this series will be with Dr. Prasanta Kalita, Professor of Agricultural & Biological Engineering and the Director of the Appropriate Scale Mechanization Consortium at the University of Illinois, at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3, via Zoom. Dr. Kalita will present her talk titled “Water Resources Management and Environmental Sustainability- A Global Perspective.”
