Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (original) (raw)

Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn holds a doctorate in Science and Technology Studies (STS) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where he is currently a full time Lecturer of Environment, Law and Society. Using multisited ethnographic methods, his research examines, and participates in, the design of innovative environmental media systems to address the communication and collaboration challenges of politically and scientifically complex environmental issues. He works within a number of collaborative endeavors, including an ethnographic project called The Asthma Files, the Platform for Experimental, Collaborative Ethnography (PECE), the Digital Practices in History and Ethnography Interest Group within the Research Data Alliance and the Multispecies Salon.

Since the Fall of 2012, Brandon has been teaching courses is the STS, Sustainability Studies and Design, Innovation and Society programs at RPI. Courses include Century of Environmental Thought, Sustainability Problems and Solutions, Nature/Society, Product Design and Innovation Studio, Sustainability Debates, Sustainability Education, Public Service Internship, Environment and Politics, Environment and Society and Sustainable Careers.

In the Asthma Files, an interdisciplinary ethnographic project, Brandon has focused on developing the Platform for Collaborative and Experimental Ethnography (PECE) on which TAF operates, developing multi-media content for the website and curating within the Communicating Asthma section.

Within the Research Data Alliance, and thanks to funding from the National Science Foundation, Brandon is working with the Interest Group in Digital Practices in History and Ethnography, conducting ethnographic research and mapping a wide variety of digital humanities projects.

In parallel with coursework relating fieldwork and artistic practices, Brandon has worked with Eben Kirksey and other colleagues in a "para-ethnographic swarm" that documented and analyzed a Multispecies Salon, bringing together artists, scientists and anthropologists during the 2010 American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Brandon contributed to a chapter, "Life in the Age of Biotechnology" (digital supplement here) in a book, set for an Autumn 2014 release from Duke University Press, and designed and built the accompanying website.

With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Vectors and a Fellowship in Digital Humanities at USC, Brandon contributed to Nick Shapiro's Trailer Tracker, developing a platform using Geographic Information Systems to map the dispersal of formaldehyde-laden trailers originally deployed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

With skills gained through graduate coursework in the RPI Arts Department, Brandon has worked and volunteered at the Sanctuary for Independent Media, in Troy NY, as a critical media literacy educator, video editor and teacher with the DIY Animation Workshop. Brandon has also taught private video editing lessons and produced content for the Journal of Cultural Anthropology, the Multispecies Salon and Capital District Community Gardens.

Brandon's zeal for STS was first sparked in 2002 at Vassar College, where he received departmental honors for his undergraduate thesis analyzing the work of Natalie Jeremijenko, drawing out possibilities for art and technology to animate social and environmental justice.
Supervisors: Kim Fortun, Mike Fortun, Dean Nieusma, and Kathy High

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