Jordan P. Howell
Welcome!
I am a human-environment geographer examining infrastructure questions in North America and Hawai’i. I am also a critical geopolitics scholar examining soft power issues in the Nordic context. My work is interdisciplinary, drawing from geography, environmental history, science and technology studies (STS), and policy research. I am currently an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Geography & Environment at Rowan University. I earned my PhD in the Dept. of Geography at Michigan State University. Before that I attended the College of William & Mary where I earned a B.A. in Anthropology.
I was previously a STAR Graduate Fellow with the US Environmental Protection Agency and also a Graduate Fellow at the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. I am a tennis player, aspiring yogi, and fitness enthusiast.
Research
In my work as a human-environment geographer, I study the geographies of technology and understanding why certain practices, processes, and artifacts are adopted in one place but rejected in another. I focus on ‘envirotechnical’ systems at the intersection of nature, technology, and society, and especially solid waste management infrastructures.
Keep up to date with the waste policy research collaborations between Jordan and talented Rowan students at the Rowan Solid Waste Lab website
As a scholar of critical geopolitics, I focus on the deployment of soft power in the Nordic and especially Danish contexts. Here, I examine the ways that hygge or 'coziness', an important component of Danish culture, is mobilized as a foreign policy tool.
Links to recent publications can be found on the 'CV' page.
Teaching
Geography
Cultural Geography
World Regional Geography
Economic Geography
Geography Senior Seminar
Environmental Studies
ES: Social Perspectives
Technology and Environment
ES Senior Seminar
Brief CV
Education
Ph.D.: Geography, Michigan State University, 2013. Dissertation: “Technology and Place: A Geography of Waste-to-Energy in the United States”; Advisor: Dr. Kyle T. Evered
M.S.: Geography, Michigan State University, 2010
B.A.: Anthropology, College of William & Mary, 2008
Professional Appointments
Visiting Scholar, Research Program, East-West Center Honolulu (January 2015)
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography & Environment, Rowan University (2013-pres)
Selected Publications
Howell, Jordan P. 2015.“’Modes of Governing’ and Solid Waste Management in Maui, Hawaii, USA”. Environment and Planning A 47: DOI:10.1177/0308518X15599286
Johnson, Laura, Jordan P. Howell, and Kyle T. Evered. 2015. “‘Where nothing was before’: (Re)producing population and place in Ghana’s Volta River Project”. Journal of Cultural Geography 32: 195-213
Howell, Jordan P. 2015. “The Fate of Waste in Hawaii: Technology Assessment and Solid Waste Planning in Hawaii, 1968-1978”. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 36: 67-82.
Howell, Jordan P. and David L. Baylis. 2014. “Mapping Energy: Cartographies of Energy into the 21st Century”. Geographical Review 104: 209-228.
Howell, Jordan P. 2012. “Risk society without reflexive modernization? The case from northwestern Michigan.” Technology in Society 34: 185-195.
Howell, Jordan P. 2011. “’Powering progress’: Regulation and the development of Michigan’s electricity landscape”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101: 962-970.
About and Contact
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