MCA: Global Environmental Imaginaries & Constrained Choice: Using Electronic Monitoring to Protect the Environment & Human Rights in Fisheries

This research project strives to advance theoretical and applied understanding to help reduce human rights abuses, including modern slavery, in fisheries.  Electronic monitoring (EM) can address environmental concerns around fishing, such as illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing).  Electronic monitoring is a system of onboard cameras that records fishing catches for later analysis, verification, and alignment with fisheries regulations.  There is a link between environmentally harmful fishing practices and the exploitation of people, with dire consequences for workers at sea (e.g., working conditions, occupational health and safety, forced labor, and modern slavery).  Recent research showed that the environmental data captured by EM could also reveal the social and labor conditions borne by workers and human observers on vessels.  Some environmental groups and governments have articulated a vision of the potential of EM to save fish populations while also making the fishing industries’ work easier for data reporting, traceability, and increasing profit.  However, this vision pits human rights to decent working conditions and fair treatment against human rights to privacy.  This project is an exploratory study to investigate the overarching research question: How is the global environmental imaginary and competing sociotechnical imaginary shaping the current use and futures of EM in fisheries?

Music, Movement, and Active Learning to Improve Collegiate STEM Education

In this wide-ranging project, we seek to enhance STEM learning for all students by questioning and overturning several traditional assumptions about STEM learning. One aim of the project focuses on movement as a neglected but powerful modality by which students may explore scientific material.  This body-based exploration may be either literal (e.g., in human anatomy) or metaphorical (using poses and motions as distillations of complicated processes). A related aim broadly encourages incorporation of the arts into STEM education — for example, through the writing and discussion of song lyrics to deepen conceptual understanding. Finally, since much of STEM education continues to emphasize high-stakes exams, a third aim is to reform these exams by linking them more transparently to other course activities via the Test Question Template (TQT) framework. Dr. Jenkins co-leads this project with Dr. Greg Crowther