Lily House Peters

Lily House-Peters

Assistant 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 expertise in conducting 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:

1. 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. 
2. 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

California State University, Long Beach

• 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 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 (Spring 2018, 2019, 2020)
• GEOG 497: Independent Study Topics: Environmental Justice in Local Communities (Spring 2020), Climate Action: Fossil Fuel Divestment (Fall 2019), Carbon Sequestration: Urban Trees (Spring 2019), Campus-Community Climate Resilience (Spring 2018), Environmental Waste: Problems & Solutions (Fall 2018)
• GEOG 640: “The Anthropocene” Graduate Seminar in Physical & Environmental Geography (Fall 2017)
• GEOG 697: Independent Study Topics: “Environmental Perception & Sense of Place” (Spring 2020), “Climate Change Impacts & Adaptation (Spring 2017)

Research Grants

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Darrell Carvalho (M.A., in progress), Experiences of Street Harassment Along the Los Angeles Blue Line

Lluvia Lastra (M.A., in progress), Assessment of Youth Environmental Education in Long Beach, California

Kirsten Berg (M.A., expected December 2020), How Green is the Green Port? Shifting Community-Port Narratives in Long Beach, California

Derek Emmons (M.A., August 2020), The Flow of Resilience: A Case Study on Working Land Conservation in the Tule River Watershed, California

Anna Johnson (M.A., January 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., August 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

Natalie Marcom (M.A., in progress), Uncovering Owens Valley’s “Indian Problem”: How the Diversion of the Owens River Led to the Decline of Traditional Foods for the Paiute People”

Julia Dowell (M.A., in progress), Resident Perceptions and Responses to the Potential Health Impacts of Increasing Temperatures in Two Demographically Distinct Communities

Arthella Vallarta (M.A., in progress), 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

In Progress

House-Peters, L. and K. Sammler. 2020. The Rise of the Mining Robots: New Technologies for Subaqueous and Subterranean Sensing and Iron Extraction in Oceania

Edited Special Issue: The Social Life of Robots

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 

Water Security & 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.

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.

Transdisciplinary Action Research for Environmental Sustainability

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.

Critical Geographies of Education

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.

Urban Environments, Climate Change, Residential Water Demand & Land Use Modeling

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.