Lily House-Peters
Lily House-Peters
Associate Professor, Department of Geography
Affiliated Faculty, Environmental Science & Policy (ESP) Program
California State University, Long Beach
1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90840
Email: lily.housepeters@csulb.edu
Campus Office: PH1-224
Research Interests & Expertise
I am a broadly trained environmental geographer and political ecologist interested in environmental philosophy, climate justice and environmental racism/justice, natural resource extraction, governance and conservation policy, and the role of emerging robotics, smart technologies, and algorithms/AI in producing novel encounters with and new understandings of nature. I have ten years of expertise in capacity building for transdisciplinary action research and have conducted research in regions across the Americas and Oceania, including the US-Mexico borderlands, Australia, and US west and southwest regions. My research draws on theoretical, conceptual, and methodological insights from political ecology, sustainability science, climate resilience, queer theory, and digital geography.
My current research projects include:
- Exploring the potential for alternative and experimental environmental governance arrangements that explicitly address power asymmetries, bridge and respect diverse knowledge systems and divergent stakeholder interests, and facilitate social learning to improve local-scale biodiversity conservation implementation in 4 case study locations (Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, and the Haida Gwaii Nation) across the Americas region.
- Examining the role of robotics, automation, and autonomous technologies in shaping our resource extraction futures, including mining in ultra-deep underground environments, on the seafloor, and off-planet. I am intrigued by the ways big data environmental processing and analysis via complex algorithms increasingly shape environmental interventions and future imaginaries of human-environment relations.
Education
- Ph.D., Geography, University of Arizona, 2016
- M.S., Geography, Portland State University, 2010
- B.A., Geography & History, The George Washington University, 2005
Courses Taught
- UHP 201: Sustainability and Technology in Los Angeles (Spring 2017, 2018, 2019)
- ESP 200: California Environmental Issues: The Salton Sea (Fall 2018, 2019, 2020) (Digital stories from the Salton Sea)
- ESP 400: Environmental Science & Policy Capstone Project (Fall 2020)
- GEOG 321: Geography of Latin America (Spring 2022, 2023)
- GEOG 325: Geography of Climate Change (Spring 2023)
- GEOG/ESP 392: Climate Action at CSULB Service Learning (Fall 2023)
- GEOG 340: Environmental Geography (Fall 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 & Spring 2017, 2018, 2020) (Check out our Environmental Geography blog for past student projects)
- GEOG/ESP 450: Environmental Sustainability & Social Justice Service Learning (Spring 2018, 2019, 2020)
- GEOG 600: Graduate Seminar in Sustainability Science
- GEOG 640: “The Anthropocene” Graduate Seminar in Physical & Environmental Geography (Fall 2017)
Research Grants
Transdisciplinary Curriculum for Global Environmental Change, Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI), PI: L. House-Peters, 2022-2023, $150,000.
Comparative Climate Change Policy Analysis in Two Cities in California (USA) and Two Cities in Baden-Wurttemberg (Germany), CSU Office of the Chancellor, Creating Climate Change Collaboration (4C) Climate Change Funding, PI: C. Jocoy, Co-PI: L. House-Peters, 2021, $4,500.
Incorporating Local and Traditional Knowledge Systems: New Insights for Ecosystem Services and Transdisciplinary Collaborations, Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) Small Grant Program (SGP) PI: G. Alonso-Yanez, Co-PI: L. House-Peters, 2018-2021, $200,000.
Environmental Justice and Resilience in Indigenous and Im/migrant Communities in Long Beach, California, Office of Research & Sponsored Projects (ORSP) at CSULB, PI: L. House-Peters, Co-PI’s: L. Heidbrink and T. Gregor, 2019-2021, $15,000.
Environmental Sustainability & Social Justice: Mitigating Climate Change Impacts for a Just Future, Campus as a Living Lab, CSU Office of the Chancellor, PI: L. House-Peters, 2017-2019, $12,000.
Pathways for Convergence and Cross-Sector Collaboration: Towards a Research Program for Actionable Socio-Environmental Science, Research Across Borders – International Research Seed Grant, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, PI: G. Alonso-Yanez; Co-PIs: L. House-Peters, M. Ohira, and S. Bonelli, 2016-2017, $10,000.
Thesis Committees & Student Mentoring
I am actively recruiting graduate students for the M.A. program in Geography. If you are interested in environmental geography, human-nature interactions, climate change adaptation, biodiversity conservation in the Americas (North America and Latin America), or theoretical questions at the intersections of nature and space, please reach out with interest or inquiries: lily.housepeters@csulb.edu.
M.A. Thesis Chair
Andrea Cano (M.A., in progress), An Archival Study of Nostalgia in Returning Visitors to Reserva Pinar del Norte, Villa Gesell, Argentina
Darrell Carvalho (M.A., in progress), Fear in Motion: Gendered Experiences of Street Harassment along the Los Angeles Blue Line Metro
Lidia Lopez – (M.A., in progress), Plastic Pollution: Are Plastic Policies Effective, Or Are Local Coastal Communities Doing More?
Lluvia Lastra (M.A., in progress), Assessment of Youth Environmental Education in Long Beach, California
Natalie Marcom (M.A., 2023), Uncovering Owens Valley’s “Indian Problem”: How the Diversion of the Owens River Led to the Decline of Traditional Foods for the Paiute People”
Samantha Ishak – (M.A., 2022) – Political Ecology of Oil Extraction at the Los Cerritos Wetlands, Long Beach
Kirsten Berg (M.A., 2020), How Green is the Green Port? Shifting Community-Port Narratives in Long Beach, California
Derek Emmons (M.A., 2020), The Flow of Resilience: A Case Study on Working Land Conservation in the Tule River Watershed, California
Anna Johnson (M.A., 2020), Documentary Discourses on Climate Change: A Critical Discourse Analysis of An Inconvenient Truth and An Inconvenient Sequel (Best Thesis Nominee)
Genie Bey (M.A., 2018), Cultivating Social-Ecological Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation through Green Infrastructure in Long Beach, California (CSULB Graduate Research Fellowship, 2018 Graduate Dean’s List Recipient & Best Thesis Nominee)
Ilianna Padilla (M.A., August 2018), From Rail Yard to Recreation: New Greenspace Governance for Achieving Environmental Spatial Justice in Los Angeles, California
M.A. Thesis Committee Member
Alejandro Beltran (M.A., in progress), Neoliberal Impacts on Migration: A Spatial Analysis of Migration Patterns from Mexico to the United States
Cameron Mayer (M.A., 2022), New West Tension and Threatened Species Protection: The Western Joshua Tree Conservation Debate in the Morongo Basin, California (Best Thesis Winner)
Julia Dowell (M.A., 2021), Resident Perceptions and Responses to the Potential Health Impacts of Increasing Temperatures in Two Demographically Distinct Communities (Best Thesis winner)
Arthella Vallarta (M.A., 2021), Operation NEXT: Is Los Angeles Ready for the Expansion of Recycled Water Reuse?
Segnide Guidimadjegbe (M.A., August 2020), The New Face of Agriculture in Southern California: Ventura County Farmers’ Adaptations to Climate Change
Katherine Georges (M.A., May 2020), Behind the Practice: Drought and Decision Making by Tulare Basin Farmers
Horacio Gomez (M.A., May 2019), Latinos Remaking Place & Creating Hope Amidst Environmental Injustice in Los Angeles
Lucas Reyes (M.A., August 2018), The Legal Green Rush: New California Agricultural Geographies in Commercial Cannabis Cultivation
Victor Norwid (M.A., May 2018), An Indicator-based Assessment of the Presence of Residential Rooftop Solar to Meet Sustainability Goals and Reduce Carbon Dioxide in the Las Vegas-Paradise Metropolitan Statistical Area
M.S. in Geographic Information Science (MSGISci) Project Advisor
Kyle Chin (M.S., August 2019), Spatio-Temporal Analyses of Assessed Parcel Values in Los Angeles using Space Time Pattern Mining Tools in ArcGIS Pro
Kathy Eung, Yoko Rader, Julie Medina (M.S. degrees, August 2018), CSULB Campus Flood Map
Undergraduate Honors Thesis Advisor
Aubrey Dodd (B.A., May 2020), Finding Value in Conservation: A Study Along the Los Angeles River
Megan Honey (B.A., December 2019), Restoring Coastal Wetlands as an Adaptation to Sea-Level Rise
Kyle Neilson (B.S., May 2019), Best Practices in Closed-Loop Supply Chains
Publications (by thematic area)
Digital Geographies, Algorithmic Governance & Extractivism
Sammler, K.G and House-Peters, L. 2023. Unblackboxing Mediation in the Digital Mine. Geoforum 141: 103745. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718523000714
Lynch, C.R., Bissel, D., House-Peters, L., and Del Casino, V. 2021. Robotics, Affective Displacement, and the Automation of Care. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 112 (3), 684-691. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/24694452.2021.1985953?journalCode=raag21
Del Casino, Jr., V., House-Peters, L., Crampton, J., and Gerhardt, H. 2020. The social life of robots: The politics of algorithms, governance, and sovereignty. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/anti.12616
House-Peters, L., V. Del Casino, Jr., and C.F. Brooks. 2019. Dialogue, inquiry, and encounter: Critical geographies of online higher education. Progress in Human Geography 43(1): 81-103. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0309132517735705
Transdisciplinary Research, Biodiversity Conservation & Environmental Sustainability
Garcia Cartagena, M., Alonso-Yanez, G., House-Peters, L., and Bonelli, S. (Eds.) (In Press, 2023). Converging Boundaries: Transdisciplinary Experiences from Biodiversity Conservation Practices in Colombia, Uruguay and Chile. DIO Press, Inc.
Sandroni, L., F. Ramos Quispe, L. House-Peters, G. Alonso-Yanez, M.I. Carabajal, M. Valentine, S. Schweizer, M. Murisa, N. Roy, A. de Vernal, N. Arbour, and A. Stewart Ibarra. (Accepted) Practicing Transdisciplinarity in Diverse Contexts: Recommendations for TD Capacity Building to face Global Environmental Change. Journal of Science Policy & Governance
Alonso-Yanez, G., Garcia-Cartagena, M., and House-Peters, L. 2020. Decentering academia through social unlearning in transdisciplinary knowledge production. Integration and Implementation Insights Blog: Research Resources for Understanding and Acting on Complex Real World Problems, https://i2insights.org/2020/02/04/decentering-and-unlearning/
Alonso-Yanez G., House-Peters, L., Garcia-Cartagena, M., Ohira, M., Bonelli, S., Lorenzo Arana, I. (2019). Mobilizing Transdisciplinary Collaborations: Collective Reflections on Decentering Academia in Knowledge Production. Global Sustainability,
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainability/article/mobilizing-transdisciplinary-collaborations-collective-reflections-on-decentering-academia-in-knowledge-production/701F67344876F5B1E644ED048A221CB9
Pischke EC., Halvorsen KE, Mwampamba TH, House-Peters L, Eastmond A, Volkow LP, Fragoso Medina M, Ohira M. (2019). Transdisciplinary research teams: Broadening the scope of who participates in research. In: Eds. Halvorsen, K., Schelly, C., Handler, R., and Knowlton, J.L. A Research Agenda for Environmental Management. Edward Elgar Publishing, UK.
Water Security, Climate Change, Environmental Management & Political Ecology
Gerlak, A.K, L. House-Peters, R.G. Varady, T. Albrecht, A. Zúñiga-Terán, C.A. Scott, R.R. de Grenade, and C. Cook. 2018. Water security: A critical review of place-based studies. Environmental Science and Policy 82: 79-89. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1462901117310766
House-Peters, L. 2017. Social-ecological transformations in riparian zones: The production of spaces of exclusion and the uneven development of resilience in the Sonoran borderlands. In: Grichting, A. and M. Zebich-Knos (Eds.) Between the Lines: The Social Ecology of Border Landscapes. Anthem Press: London.
deGrenade, R., L. House-Peters, C.A. Scott, B. Thapa, M. Mills-Novoa, A. Gerlak, and K. Verbist. 2016. The nexus: Reconsidering environmental security and adaptive capacity. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 21: 15-21.
Varady, R.G., van Weert, F., Megdal, S.B., Gerlak, A., Iskandar, C.A., and House-Peters, L. 2013. Groundwater Governance: A Global Framework for Country Action (No. 5). FAO/Global Environment Facility.
Gober, P., Middel, A., Brazel, A., Myint, S., Chang, H., Duh, J.D., and House-Peters, L. 2012. Tradeoffs between water conservation and temperature amelioration in Phoenix and Portland: Implications for urban sustainability. Urban Geography 33 (7): 1030–1054.
Chang, H. and House-Peters, L. 2012. A roadmap for expanding U.S.-Korea Alliance Cooperation: Cooperation on functional issues, climate change. In: Snyder, S. (Ed.) The US-South Korea Alliance: Meeting New Security Challenges. Lynne Rienner Publishers: London.
House-Peters, L. and Chang, H. 2011. Urban water demand modeling: review of concepts, methods, and organizing principles. Water Resources Research 47 (5), W05401.
House-Peters, L. and Chang, H. 2011. Modeling the impact of land use and climate change on neighborhood-scale evaporation and nighttime cooling: A surface energy balance approach. Landscape and Urban Planning 103(2): 139-155.
House-Peters, L., B. Pratt, and H. Chang. 2010. Effects of urban spatial structure, sociodemographics, and climate on residential water consumption in Hillsboro, Oregon. Journal of American Water Resources Association 46(3): 1-12.
Chang, H. and House-Peters, L. 2010. Cities as places for climate mitigation and adaptation: A case study of Portland, Oregon, USA. Journal of the Korean Geographical Society 45(1): 49-74.