In honor of Earth Week, a “Sustainable Community Futures Roundtable” will be held on April 19 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Bruggeman Conference Center in the Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D. Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

“The event is an interactive panel designed to imagine what's possible when we start to act with community in mind and come together to shape collective futures with equity and care at the forefront,” said Jennifer Cardinal, lecturer in sustainability studies.

Participants include Jammella Anderson, founder of Free Food Fridge Albany; Damaris Miller, collective member at Rested Root; Priya Mulgaonkar, senior policy and field manager at Green New Deal Network and board chair of BK ROT; and Bettina Stoetzer, associate professor of anthropology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Prior to the roundtable at 12:15 p.m., the event will begin with comments by Stoetzer on her book, Ruderal City: Ecologies of Migration, Race, and Urban Life in Berlin (Duke University Press, December 2022.) The book draws on fieldwork with immigrant and refugee communities, as well as ecologists, nature enthusiasts, and other Berlin residents to illustrate how human-environment relations have become a key register through which urban citizenship is articulated in contemporary Europe.

The event comes from thinking about multi-scale approaches to RPI's role in community-engaged sustainability research and action. It is co-sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology Studies in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; Vasudha Living and Learning Community; the Vollmer Fries Fund; and RPI Sunrise.