With training in architecture, the arts and law, Charles’ interests revolve around human-nature relations. Charles brings a wealth of environmental expertise from his academic career as the Barbara B. and Bertram J. Cohn Professor in Environmental Studies at Sarah Lawrence College (New York), as well as from his earlier on-the-ground work for organizations such as The Rainforest Alliance. The through line in his work as a scholar, teacher and botanical artist is attention to environmental imagery in texts, practices, and visual media.

Charles is known for the diversity of research that he has conducted in Indonesia, which has provided the grounding for new insights on customary law and the environmental beliefs and practices of fishing societies in Indonesia. During his stay at AU, he will be working to develop a text of varying voices and literary forms to render alive the worlds of coastal fishing communities on the Indonesian islands of Sulawesi and the Moluccas. Through his experiments with different styles of narration (prose poems, ethnography, ruminations), Charles is formulating new ways of telling lively stories about particular places, peoples, and other-than-human organisms that spark the interest of both academic and wider audiences. 

During his time at CEH, Charles will be leading a workshop on environmental writing, as well as a participating in a dialogue about his own research, and we welcome all interested folks to take these opportunities to get to know more about his research and genre experimentation in the environmental humanities.

Charles’ stay at CEH is generously funded by AUFF.