Website: https://anthropology.uconn.edu/person/eleanor-ouimet/

What motivated you to join CLEAN EARTH?

I was motivated by the opportunity to collaborate on efforts to ensure a clean energy transition built upon socially equitable and environmentally sustainable energy infrastructure and distribution that mitigates historic and contemporary energy and environmental injustices and minimizes the socio-environmental impact of future clean energy development.

What aspect of your research do you find most valuable for the people and communities?

I’m an environmental anthropologist who examines various aspects of the human-environment relationship and the ways human beings relate to one another in the context of environmental protection, use, abuse, and change. Much of my current work focuses on environmental justice in disaster preparedness, and the ways in which marginalized communities are routinely discriminated against in disaster preparedness and recovery efforts, as well as in climate adaptation and mitigation strategies. I bring ethnographic research methods to my interdisciplinary collaborations in hopes of helping to preemptively identifying areas of community need, the roots of environmental and energy injustice, and the ways in which communities can be empowered and supported in their own resilience and survivance.