This episode, where I have the pleasure of introducing you to Cathy Jordan, was recorded live as part of the 2021 annual meeting of the Institute on the Environment (IonE) at the University of Minnesota. It was a really fun experience to get to record the podcast with a live (albeit virtual) audience and I must thank Courtney Peters, Julie Hanus, Sofia Leyva, Kellcee Baker, Ben Fink, and — of course — Cathy for helping to make it happen.

It was really cool to record the first live episode of Just Sustainability with Cathy Jordan. During my time as a postdoctoral fellow at Wesleyan University, I happened across a series of articles by Cathy about community-based participatory research when I was working on a project about how climate research within the academy should be reformed in response to concerns about environmental justice. Those articles by Cathy changed how I thought (and continue to think) about the role of academics within society and research ethics.

Cathy Jordan wears many hats. She’s a pediatric neuropsychologist that teaches at the University of Minnesota Medical School. She’s also the Associate Director for Leadership & Education at the Institute on the Environment and the Consulting Director of Research for the Children and Nature Network. While Cathy’s work is always informed by the principle that research should robustly include the communities that it’s about, her scholarship has — at different times — focused on a range of topics. These topics include: the impacts of lead exposure on children, methods within community-based participatory research, and the effect of exposure to nature on wellness and learning.

Links: http://environment.umn.edu/staff/cathy-jordan/ https://www.childrenandnature.org/ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00766/full