Scholars Award: Light Pollution's Social and Ecological Consequences and Contexts

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

This project will analyze how scientists, research teams, and organizations have produced knowledge about environmental light pollution. The project will contribute to our understanding of the politics of artificial light at night and the history of nightscapes, and lightscapes. This project will expands empirical and analytical insights regarding the politics of environmental knowledge production. This study will bring critical social science perspectives to research impacts and responses on communities to artificial light at night. The findings from this project will contribute to conservation science, policymaking, and citizen science and will be made public through writings, conferences and educational activities. Using approaches from science and technology studies and environmental history the project will examine how historical, cultural, institutional, and technoscientific factors shape what is known about artificial light at night and its socio-ecological consequences through citizen/expert approaches, cultural and political contexts, and public/private conservation efforts. The research will be done in collaboration with light pollution scientists, government agencies, and NGOs using archives, oral histories, interviews, and ethnographic observation. The project will contribute social science insights into light pollution and its role as growing socio-ecological issue that can indicate on a global-scale, anthropogenic environmental change.