ESS Updates & Awards Nominations

[Prakash Kashwan]

Dear GEP-ed Colleagues & Friends:

I am writing to share some exciting updates regarding the heightened level of Interest that the Environmental Studies Section (ESS) attracted at ISA 2024. Those present at the business meeting in San Fransisco already know this, but this should also be of broader interest to GEP-ed community [At the ESS business meeting, we also recognized the contributions that GEP-ed moderator/s make to our community]. 

The First Choice paper submission for the ESS shot up dramatically from 98 paper submissions in 2023 to 223 submissions in 2024. Other metrics of submissions also saw increases. This made the job of the program chair more challenging than it was in the past years. The interest was also visible in the jam-packed business meeting and super jam-packed gathering at the ESS reception. Many of the ESS panels attracted very impressive levels of attendance. Let's hope that this interest continues and shows up in the increases in ESS membership, which is how we get a larger number of panel allocations for future ISA conferences. Please encourage your colleagues and collaborators in IR and other disciplines to become ESS members when they renew their ISA membership. 

Award nominations: Moving on to ISA 2025, please send your Graduate Student Paper Award Nominations to the Chair via pkas...@brandeis.edu by June 1. We have not been very successful in attracting these nominations in recent years, so I would appreciate it greatly if you could dig into your ISA 2024 notes and nominate any impressive graduate student presentations you may have attended or may know of.

Distinguished Scholar Award (DSA) and Engaged Scholar Award (ESA): After brainstorming with the awards committee, we have extended the deadline for DSA and ESA by two weeks to May 15th, which is approaching fast. Please direct your nominations and queries to Matt Hoffman (matt.h...@utoronto.ca), who is chairing the Awards committee for ISA 2025. There are no changes to the nomination guidelines for the DSA. ESS members at the business meeting agreed to an important change to the ESA nominations, for which please refer to the text at the bottom of this email. This text reflects the decisions made at the business meeting. 

Voting on Amendment to the ESS Charter and Committee Elections: The electronic voting for these important items is open until May 10th. If you are an ESS member and have not received the ISA email with a link to the electronic ballot, please check your emails (including the Spam/junk folders). You may also contact Lily Hsueh (lyh...@asu.edu) for additional help in this regard.

My best wishes for a restful summer ahead,

Prakash

1. The Engaged Scholar Award is to be given to a person at any stage of their career who has successfully spanned (or is successfully spanning) academia and social/political engagement or activism on issues related in some way to the environment. The award will recognize scholars who spend some of their time directly involved in engaged work beyond scholarship, through activism, organizing, or advocacy, whether in local communities, public or private institutions, or through transnational networks. We understand “engagement” and “activism” to include efforts by scholars to participate in community-based or policy-oriented engagement, advising, social organizing, and/or societal transformation, beyond having their academic work read by those outside academia.
1. Recipients must meet the following criteria:
1. Record of meaningful scholarly/academic work or promise: The recipient should have a record of writing that is used and recognized — or, for early career scholars, hold the promise of use and recognition — within the academic community of environmental studies (this includes interdisciplinary environmental studies, politics and policy, geography, sociology, and other cognate fields). That is, the recipient should be actively involved in academia and may be at any stage of their academic career.
2. Evidence of activist, public, community, and/or policy engagement: The recipient should have evidence of activity that moves beyond academia into participation in activism, policy, or organizing work. For this award, engagement refers to organizing, advocacy, or other transformational action beyond scholarly writing. That is, the award recipient should be more than someone whose scholarly writings are read and used by those outside the academy — they will themselves be actively engaged in activism, organizing, or policy work beyond scholarly publishing. The engagement may be short- or long-term (specific instances of engagement or ongoing participation), may be through advising or leadership roles, and may be through local, regional, or transnational communities, institutions, or processes.
3. Environmental connection: The academic and/or engagement work of the scholar should have some link (direct or indirect) to environmental studies. Usually the academic work of the recipient will inform or be informed by their engagement outside academia.
4. Be (or become) a member of the International Studies Association: The recipient must be a member or be prepared to join the ISA for the year of the award. For those not already members of the Environmental Studies Section, the award will include membership in the section for the year.
2. Prize
1. a panel session honoring the work of the recipient;
2. acknowledgement at the ESS reception; and
3. A monetary award.^[1]
3. Selection Process
1. Nominations–including self-nominations or secondary nominations–for the ESS Engaged Scholar Award should be submitted to the Scholar Awards Committee Chair by May 15 for the year preceding the award (i.e. in 2024 for the 2025 award).
2. You may nominate yourself or another scholar. Nomination packages must contain:
1. A CV of the nominee — this will be used to evaluate the nominee’s record of meaningful scholarly work/writing. For early career scholars, details about graduate degree programs should be provided (e.g., course of study, thesis/dissertation work in progress, etc.).
2. A statement of engagement (one page [500 words] maximum) — this will be used to evaluate the nominee’s direct participation in activism, mobilization, community support, organizing, advocacy, and/or policy work (whether specific instances or ongoing participation). The statement will also be used to evaluate the relevance of the nominee’s work to the field of environmental studies (broadly understood).
3. A letter of explicit consent from the nominee stating that they are willing to have their name put forward for the award.
3. The ESS Scholar Awards Committee will then select the recipient of the award from this pool of nominations.
4. The ESS Scholar Awards Committee will then notify the ESS Chair and is responsible for ensuring that the Award Information is provided to the Chair prior to ISA’s internal deadline.

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^[1] The amount of this award is US$500.

**The brevity of emails is meant to reduce the burden of excessive laptop use**
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Prakash Kashwan, Ph.D. (Google Scholar)
Associate Professor of Environmental Studies
Chair, Env Justice Concentration, MPP, Heller School for Social Policy & Management
Brandeis University, Waltham, MA

Editor, Environmental Politics
Chair, Environmental Studies Section, International Studies Association (ISA)