OSU Lecturer to Take in-depth look at sneaky environmental problems

Friday, April 2, 2010

By Joseph Dunn

(April 1, 2010, STILLWATER, Okla.) – Nature’s hazards and society’s ever-growing dependence on technology can make a dangerous pair, as when an unprecedented ice storm destroys a metropolitan’s area’s electric supply.

Raymond Murphy, one of the world’s leading environmental sociologists, will deliver a lecture about these vulnerabilities on April 14 at Oklahoma State University. The lecture is titled “The Chronic and the Acute: Managing Creeping Environmental Problems and Sudden Disasters” and starts at 3:30 p.m. in Room 412 of Engineering South.  The talk will draw upon Murphy’s research on the 1998 Montreal ice storm.

Murphy is an emeritus professor in sociology at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He serves as the president of the Environment and Society Research Committee of the International Sociological Association.

His work includes Leadership in Disaster: Learning for a Future with Global Climate Change, Sociology and Nature and Social Closure. “Dr. Murphy’s books and articles have had a major influence on the field of environmental social science internationally,” said OSU Regents Professor Riley Dunlap.

Murphy has served as a keynote speaker at many conferences including the German Environmental Sociology Summit and the Australian Sociological Association Environment and Society Working Group Symposium.

The lecture is free and open to the public and is hosted by the OSU Department of Sociology, one of 24 departments in the College of Arts & Sciences. It is funded by the college’s  Social Science Seminar Series. To learn more, phone (405) 744-6108 or e-mail riley.dunlap@okstate.edu.