Ryan Emanuel, associate professor of hydrology in Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment, will give the 2022 Odum Environmental Ethics Lecture,  “On the Swamp: Indigenous Erasure, Environmental Justice, and the Transformation of North Carolina’s Coastal Plain," sponsored by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts and the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program. The event is also presented as part of the Willson Center’s 2022 Global Georgia Initiative public events series.

Emanuel is known for his innovative scholarship on water, environmental justice and Indigenous rights. Before his Jannuary 2022 appointment at Duke, he led the Ecohydrology and Watershed Science Lab at North Carolina State University, where he was a University Faculty Scholar and professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, and a faculty fellow at the Center for Geospatial Analytics.

A prolific researcher with nearly 50 peer-reviewed publications to his credit, he is widely cited for his studies on water and biogeochemical cycles in mountain landscapes; the effects of saltwater intrusion on coastal freshwater ecosystems; and the impacts of climate change and land-use change on Indigenous lands and communities.

Emanuel is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, and he frequently combines tools and ideas from both the academic tradition and Indigenous knowledge systems in his studies and teaching.

Advance registration for this event, which will be presented live via Zoom webinar, is required and available here.