RESEARCHER | EDUCATOR | ORGANIZER

EMBER mcCOY

Dr. Ember McCoy is researcher, organizer, and educator currently based in central Pennsylvania, where she is a postdoctoral scholar in Pennsylvania State University’s Social Science Research Institute. Her work sits at the intersection of environmental justice activism, data, and governance, focusing on resistance to technologies designed to mitigate environmental harm and their consequences for people’s lives and livelihoods. She holds a Ph.D. and M.S. from the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability with specializations in environmental justice, science & technology public policy, and science and technology studies and a B.A. from Carthage College in Environmental Policy Analysis.

Ember’s current book project interrogates the politics of air pollution monitoring and activism by following the story of Detroit-area resident-activists with whom she has worked for over ten years. In it, she evaluates how and why EJ residents’ experiences have been incommensurate with environmental policymaking and how technical and policy elites contribute to shaping those conditions. Her scholarly writing can be found in Environmental Justice, Antipode, and Current Environmental Health Reports, among others.