Katie Meehan

Assistant Professor

Faculty Resident Scholar, Wayne Morse Center for Law & Politics

Coleman-Guitteau Professor in the Humanities (Teaching Fellow)

My research focuses on water sustainability, informal urban development, and science and technology studies. As a political ecologist, I seek to explain how material practices and objects shape our cities, particularly in the context of environmental transformation and deepening inequalities. I focus mostly on water. My dissertation (2010), set in the Mexican city of Tijuana, examined why urban dwellers create informal, decentralized water supply--such as rainwater harvesting and greywater reuse--and the extent to which such technonatures produce diverse economies, institutions, and modes of development. While state efforts to provide safe drinking water have largely failed worldwide, my research explores water informality as a potentially viable alternative, cultivating 'surplus possibilities' in and beyond neoliberal governance. This work was funded by the NSF, NOAA, Fulbright-Hays, and the SSRC; results are in various stages of publication.

Currently, I am hatching two major research initiatives. The first project examines the sustainability of water informality and infrastructure under changing climatic conditions in Mexico City. The second project--a collaboration with microbiologists, ecologists, and social scientists--examines questions of scale and sustainability among scientific communities studying carbon cycle processes in the Brazilian Amazon. Both research threads are knotted together by an interest in how materiality and knowledge shape real-world outcomes. My approach is interdisciplinary and pluralistic, drawing on science and technology studies (STS), political ecology, and social theory.

For the 2011-2012 academic year, I am a Faculty Resident Scholar of the Wayne Morse Center for Law & Politics. During my time as a Morse Fellow, I am preparing a book manuscript based on my dissertation research.

I also received the 2011-2012 Sherl K. Coleman and Margaret E. Guitteau Professorship in the Humanities, from the Oregon Humanities Center. This teaching fellowship has supported my new undergraduate course, Urban Geography: The Wire (GEOG 442). In this class, we use the acclaimed television series The Wire to examine how capital and culture shape the American city. For more information, check out the profile below, produced by a UO journalism student.

U of O Class taught on HBO's The Wire from Erik Gundersen on Vimeo.