Dear ESS members and GEP-ED people,
Just as a reminder, there is a travel grant for attending ISA 2026. As the guidelines indicate, the ISA travel grants program was created to provide junior scholars, senior graduate students and scholars from low-income countries some assistance to enable them to attend conferences that would otherwise be out of reach for all but the better paid, senior faculty. I encourage all who would qualify to apply for these grants.
Policies and the application can be found at: https://www.isanet.org/Conferences/ISA2026/Travel/Grants. Applications close September 1, 2025.
Kemi Fuentes-George,
Associate Professor in Political Science,
Middlebury College
Global Environmental Politics, Book Review Editor
Recent Publications:
“Music Gonna Teach: Decolonising IR through a musical exploration of knowledge.” Review of International Studies, 2024: 1-18
“The Legacy of Colonialism on Contemporary Environmental Governance,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 24 (1): 91-98 (Spring 2023)
"The Comparative Politics of Environmental Justice," Oxford University Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics (2021, Oxford University Press)
Contemplative Environmentalism
WORKSHOP for EDUCATORS & ACTIVISTS
July 14-19, 2025
Lama Foundation, Taos, New Mexico, USA
Cost: $800
(includes tuition, meals, and accommodations but not travel expenses)

(Sunset at Lama Foundation)
Recent political developments threaten to intensify social injustice and environmental collapse around the world. This workshop brings together environmental professors and activists to explore how best to teach and advocate in these challenging times. It provides tools for finding emotional strength, perfecting pedagogical skills, and cultivating activist courage at this historical moment.
Much of the workshop will focus on the interface between our inner lives and planetary realities. We will use meditation, deep listening, writing, yoga, immersion in nature, and other contemplative practices to infuse our environmental work with greater self-awareness and compassionate commitment. In this sense, the workshop aims to help us reset priorities, become ethically more alive, and live with greater personal and professional purpose. (No prior experience in meditation or contemplative practices is necessary.)
The workshop will take place at the Lama Foundation, an off-grid, retreat center in the mountains of northern New Mexico, USA. Lama receives its electricity from the sun, water from a spring, and much of its food in the summer from its gardens. The place is stunningly beautiful. It provides an ideal setting for integrating our deepest spiritual yearnings with our professional and personal environmental commitments. Think of the workshop as a professional ‘conference’ focused directly on you and your deepest aspirations as a teacher, activist, and human being. Please join us!
Workshop facilitators: Leticia Merino (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) mer...@sociales.unam.mx
Julie Tato (Taos Mountain Sangha)
Paul Wapner (American University) pwa...@american.edu
We ask interested participants to complete a brief application to explain why the workshop will be of benefit. To request an application or receive more information about the workshop, please email Paul Wapner (pwa...@american.edu).
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