IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
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Household Water Insecurity Research: Advancing SDG 6 and the Global Water Agenda
In this talk, I discuss an emerging framework of research on household water insecurity – identifying the advances and opportunities this interdisciplinary approach offers for supporting SDG6 and the global water agenda. I expand these ideas through empirical cases taken from ongoing projects on household water insecurity in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast region, where I have been working since 2015. I conclude with some reflections on frontiers, challenges, and opportunities – returning (but probably not resolving) the tensions at this intersection of critical work, social scientific inquiry, and the operating space of science-policy dialogues supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Wendy Jepson
Professor, Texas A&M University
Bio:
Dr. Wendy Jepson holds a University Professorship in the Department of Geography at Texas A&M University where she has been on faculty since receiving her Ph.D. in Geography from UCLA in 2003. Since 2016, Dr. Jepson has been a Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza (Brazil). Her research addresses contemporary debates in political ecology, human-environment interactions, and water security and governance. Dr. Jepson leads several research projects and institutional initiatives on water security. Dr. Jepson was a recent Fulbright Scholar (2016-2017) and AAAS Leshner Fellow for Public Engagement (2018-2019). She also is a recipient of several National Science Foundation grants that focus on water security – examining different aspects of water insecurity in south Texas colonias and urban Brazil. Dr. Jepson leads the NSF-funded Household Water Insecurity Experiences – Research Coordination Network (HWISE-RCN), an international community of scholars and practitioners dedicated to advance research and work in the interdisciplinary field of water insecurity. Dr. Jepson also is the principal investigator for a $1.5M Texas A&M University Presidential Excellence Grant, “Pathways to Sustainable Urban Water Security: Desalination and Water Reuse.” She has generated over $3 million in grants and awards as lead PI from NSF, private sources, and internal awards to support her research agenda.
Website: https://geography.tamu.edu/people/profiles/faculty/jepsonwendy.html