Dr. Mercedes Quesada-Embid is Associate Professor of Environmental Policy and Advocacy at Catawba College. She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies, a Master’s in History, and two Bachelor’s degrees: one in Spanish Language and Culture and the other in the Biological Sciences. She has been teaching at the university level since 2004 and her professional and personal background help to keep her attuned to the search for whole picture solutions for the pressing challenges of our world today.

She is a transdisciplinary scholar with research and teaching interests spanning the social and natural sciences, always with a clear concern for ecological integrity, equitable political-economies, and the building of truly democratic societies through strong community capacity. She believes that service, experiential learning, and critical inquiry are key elements to successful knowledge acquisition and is intent on cultivating an academic experience in the classroom that is impactful and relevant to students’ daily lives. Thus, her varied courses taught gravitate toward and explore an array of eco-egalitarian concerns, including, the significant role of social movements as they enhance local resilience and global sustainability efforts.

Dr. Quesada-Embid believes that inclusive policy and purposeful advocacy work can foster viable pathways toward cultural, economic, and ecological justice. She has a strong desire to empower a hope-and-agency-rich impact on the injustices prevalent in our communities and larger societal framework. She believes that in our globalized world, sustainability has become the work of our time; which she understands as a pathway toward a more just future. Thus, an integrated, scholar-activist community ethic fuels her understanding of the necessity for interspecies and intergenerational justice and centers deeply in her work.

Research interests

* Ecological resilience and social advocacy on local and global scales
* Multicultural frameworks, manifestations and successes of the Environmental Justice movement
* Scientific commons and citizen science as a public good
* Service-learning and community development engagement initiatives within Environmental and Sustainability Studies;
* Transdisciplinary and experiential pedagogies
* Environmental history and non-western scientific thought
* Postcolonial scholarship and socio-cultural policy change
* Democratic discourse for strategic environmental communication toward peace-building
* Ecological economics as a model for sustainable development
* Varied cultural and scientific perceptions of sustainability, conservation, wilderness and ecological integrity
* Indigenous cultures and attention to the significance of local knowledge and cultural heritage, traditional ecological knowledge, cultural geography and oral histories
* Incorporating environmental issues within the teaching of Spanish
* The multifaceted culture and historical ecology of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage landscape(s)