New Books in Environmental Studies

Roads, bridges, a renewable power plant, and an electricity grid: UN peacekeepers might be unusual infrastructure builders, but they’re certainly not unambitious. Since the beginning of the UN’s peacekeeping activities after the end of World War II, the Blue Helmets have cemented streets, constructed bridges, and dug wells in conflict zones. But how did the military arm of the world’s primary diplomatic forum become involved in such activities in its quest for peace, and with what consequences? Peace Infrastructures: How UN Peace Operations Build Roads, Bridges, and Solar Farms in the Pursuit of Sustainability (MIT Press, 2026) by Dr. Silvia Danielak analyzes the turn to ever-more-complex infrastructure projects, from early road building via urban community projects to the commissioning of entire renewable power plants, in the context of an evolving understanding of peace “problems” and solutions. Tracing the global travel of policies, technologies, and expertise, Dr. Danielak investigates how the shift toward risk management, legacy, and climate security was driven by, and materialized in, conflict zones, shaping the very idea of peace.The book critically engages with the UN’s ambition to insert itself in the sustainable development of the countries it seeks to assist, arguing that we need to consider peace operations’ spatial, urban, and material ways of engagement—especially in the face of mounting climate risks. Infrastructure is poised to take a more prominent position within peace operations, but a more nuanced understanding that recognizes its opportunities, as well as its potential for violence, is required.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Modern Paris is often hailed as a capital of urban infrastructure. Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s rebuilding of Paris in 1853–1870, branded “Haussmannization,” helped define urban modernity for cities worldwide. But even as infrastructures expanded and modernized, some Parisians were left behind: as late as 1928, 18 percent of houses still lacked direct sewerage. Haussmannization often hid infrastructures behind walls and floors, under streets, or in peripheral districts. In the forty years after 1870, a period that Dr. Peter Soppelsa calls “secondary Haussmannization,” Parisians inverted them—revealed their hidden components to scrutinize their workings and costs for society, environment, and health—and in turn politicized them.

Drawing on French government archives, engineers’ maps, the illustrated press, and a collection of over 100 photographic postcards, in Paris After Haussmann: Living with Infrastructure in the City of Light, 1870–1914 (U Pittsburgh Press, 2026) Dr. Soppelsa charts the diverse embodied, emotional, and everyday experiences of living with expanding urban infrastructures—streets, housing, tramways, subways, the water supply, sewers, and rivers—in Paris from 1870 to 1914. Parisians learned that infrastructures were not simply technical solutions for the social and environmental problems of city life but could also bring about new dangers and dependencies.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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As detailed in The Japanese Garden: Ella Christie and Cowden (Birlinn, 2026) by Lucy Stewart, at the turn of the twentieth century, Scottish adventurer Ella Christie returned home from a trip to Japan inspired to build her own Japanese garden.

As might be expected from a woman who thought nothing of travelling to the other side of the world in search of the unusual, Ella’s approach to developing the garden was trailblazing. She chose a female designer – the gifted Taki Handa – to create the seven-acre site in the grounds of Cowden Castle, near the Scottish town of Dollar. In doing so, the Japanese Garden at Cowden became the first and only garden of its size and scale to be designed by a woman. It remains a unique and utterly authentic bridge between British and Japanese culture. This book tells the remarkable story of Ella Christie, her travels and the creation of her garden, its gradual decline and triumphant restoration.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Permafrost melts, desert cities boil, inland lakes dry up; but Waltham too in its own way has become one of the dark places of the earth. Adverse manmade climate change is seeping into basements everywhere, and a wonderful new research project, “Building Collective Resilience via Collective Memory” (that website launches very soon) counts some of the ways.

John is joined by two Brandeis colleagues who spearheaded the project and supplied some of the local interviews that bring climate change dynamics vividly to life. Danielle Jacques is at work on a dissertation exploring the social and spatial dynamics of the renewable energy transition. Rachel McKane is Assistant Professor of Sociology with interests in community-based approaches to environmental justice through networks of solidarity and mutual aid, and articles in such journals as Environmental Research Letters, Environmental Justice, Environmental Sociology, and Local Environment. We also hear from Mark and from Colleen (about peaches!) in this episode.

Mentioned in the episode

Follow the project's growth at Building Collective Resilience via Collective Memory. Or read about its origins in a local newspaper story here.

John Dittmer, Local People

Victorian neighborhood class proximity maps of London include the famous Booth "poverty maps."

Yuki Kato, Gardens of Hope.

Read the episode here.
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In Irish Anthropocene, Malcolm Sen traces the ways in which contemporary Irish literature responds to climate breakdown. Drawing upon concepts of sovereignty, precarity, and disaster, Sen examines Irish literary works to reveal how they engage with the entangled relations between ecology, economy, and politics. Irish writers not only critique the association of greenness with Ireland and the corporatization of sustainability discourses, they also illuminate the acute challenges that the climate crisis poses to political, social, and cultural forms in addition to ecosystems.

The Irish canon has historically played a crucial role in Irish nationalism. But contemporary works are written at a time when questions of statehood and citizenship are yielding to the cross-border, multi-generational pressures of climate breakdown. Writing in the shadow of modernity's rhetorical and carbon emissions, contemporary authors are skeptical of business-as-usual sustainability jargon emanating from institutions. Instead, they focus on the local variations of the planetary-level threats dominating the discourse of the Anthropocene, placing the country in a webwork of ecological and geo-political relations.

Cleverly written and groundbreaking in scope, Sen's analyses shows that Ireland's postcolonial identity can be especially helpful to analyze the cultural footprint of the climate crisis.

Malcolm Sen is the director of the Environmental Humanities Specialization and an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the editor of A History of Irish Literature and the Environment and Race in Irish Literature and Culture.

Helen Penet is a lecturer in English and Irish Studies at Université de Lille (France).
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