Working in Academia, Clean Cooking, and Climate Hope with Dr. Deepti Chatti

Laura interviews Deepti Chatti, assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego, to explore energy access, clean cooking transitions, and how social, cultural, and environmental factors shape climate solutions around the world. From interdisciplinary research and teaching climate justice to finding hope in the next generation of environmental leaders, this episode examines how people navigate complex environmental challenges while working toward a more equitable and sustainable future.

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Connect with Deepti Chatti at https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepti-chatti-b20b864/ 

Guest Bio:
Dr. Deepti Chatti is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Diego. An engineer turned ethnographer, Deepti draws on her interdisciplinary training to critically analyze sustainable development efforts in India and the United States. Her current research is on energy access and air pollution exposures in historically marginalized communities.

Deepti received her PhD at Yale University. Prior to her current work in academia, Deepti worked for several years in public policy research in India, and as an engineer in California helping cities and counties plan for and design public environmental infrastructure.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds, Nic and Laura.

On today's episode, Sam and I talk about being nervous for no reason. Nic and I interview Deepti Chatti about working in academia, clean cooking, and climate hope.

And finally, since we talk about clean cooking in the interview, here are some fun facts about it. Clean cooking is the use of modern low emission energy services, efficient stoves, and clean fuels such as electricity, gas, or solar energy that replaced the traditional burning of solid fuels like wood, charcoal, or animal dung, protecting human health and the environment.

Burning wood fuels releases roughly 1 gigaton of CO2 equivalent. Annually, about 2% of the global CO2 emissions, yet highly efficient stoves can cut fuel use by 30 to 60%, lowering those climate harming emissions. In developing countries, women and children spend up to 10 hours a week gathering cooking fuel, and that clean cooking gives back for school, work, and family. Fascinating.

Hit that music.

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Let's get to our segment.

So Laura, I have another question for you. So we've been doing interviews and I'm the actual interviewer this time, not the other way around, and I don't know why, but I get so nervous when I'm interviewing other people, even though I have the job and my job isn't at stake at all. I'm just interviewing someone. Why do I get nervous? Why?

Well, I'm not a psychologist, so I really don't know any scientific reasons for this, but I know that I experience it at times as well. I think there could be a few different causes.

But I will say that it kind of, it happens to me sometimes, like when I've been doing coaching for almost 10 years. Like I've had hundreds, I mean, EPR, like I, this is what I do, I talk to people, I interview them all day, but whenever I have a coaching call, I get so much dread.

You know, it doesn't stop me from doing it, but I'm just like I have this like weird lizard brain internal dread of just like, I don't want to do it for some reason. Then I have the call, I'm like they were amazing, that was great. Oh, I love them. I'm so happy I had the call and it's every single time it's like this cycle, it's so it's something, I think it's something deeper.

So anyone listening probably probably everyone has something like this where it's like. You know, I've heard of like rock stars who throw up before their shows, they've been famous for decades, but they still get the same nerve, so it must be something primal, I think, um, but on the interview side, I would think too that maybe you've been in their shoes, so you kind of know what it feels like, so it could be some sort of mirroring.

Maybe, maybe, and like, yeah, like you say, I, I interview these people and they're like, oh, they're perfectly lovely, right, so.

Yeah, there's no actual real fear. There's nothing to be afraid of, right, you know, and like I work for myself. I don't like I'm waiting for a boss to tell me I did a bad job or something, you know, but it's just, I think too some of it is caring that you do a good job, but yeah, it's interesting, but I guess, you know, there's not much to say about it except it's normal. I think I experienced it as well.

Right. But let's get to our interview and not be nervous about it.

All right.

Welcome back to EPR. Today we're joined by Deepti Chatti, assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego. She teaches in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the Critical Gender Studies Program. Deepti, it's great to have you on the show.

Great to be here. Thank you.

Awesome. I am excited to have you. We have not had anyone from academia in quite a while. So, let's dive into this. Before your current work as a researcher and professor, you were in environmental engineering. So how did you end up in engineering first, and then we'll go on to your academic route?

Sure, I definitely have a bit of a circuitous path to getting to where I am today. I did my undergraduate in civil and environmental engineering, and then I did my master's degree in environmental engineering, and then worked as an engineer for a few years, and I worked in California.

And I loved my job, I loved doing what I did, and I primarily got into it because, you know, as a kid, I really loved science, I loved mathematics, and, I also loved writing and reading. I mean, there were so many things I was interested in, and it just happened to be what I kind of stumbled into.

Also, to be perfectly honest, I was finishing high school. I was in India, where I, where I was born and where I grew up. At least where I was, it just felt like a very natural next step to go into an engineering undergraduate degree.

It was also just given where the economy of India was at the time, it was also one of the degrees I could get that meant that I could see a path to getting a job. Um, you know, it was important to me to be financially independent.

So anyway, that's kind of a bit of an explanation as to why I decided to take up engineering. I thoroughly enjoyed it and love the training that it provided me and love the way that it allowed me to, See the world in particular ways, particularly see environmental questions and solutions in particular ways.

After working for a few years in that job, I felt like I was kind of just reaching a bit of a limit as to what I was learning and how passionate I felt about the new things that I was learning. And so I decided to shift careers.

I was also at the time feeling like I wanted to move back to India to feel more connected with environmental questions in India. So I decided to sort of pair the, the geographic move with the professional move, and I started working at a policy research institute in India.

And as part of my work there, I did a lot of fieldwork. I would often be, you know, I worked on water and sanitation, I worked on agriculture, climate change, you know, all kinds of different things.

And I was basically, because I enjoy doing fieldwork, and I, I speak a few different languages, and I enjoy talking to people. I would often be sent off to the field to be like, OK, you go, you go talk to the farmers, you go talk to, you know, these, um, engineers who manage this water system.

And through doing that, I realized that actually, my engineering training was, I was hitting a wall with regards to how much I was able to analyze the information that I was learning in the field.

And I felt like I really wanted a much more interdisciplinary, more social sciences in my training, frankly, to analyze truly what I was, you know, learning in the field.

And so I went back to get a PhD. I was fortunate enough to go to a very interdisciplinary PhD program. I went to the Yale School of Environment, and there it's kind of like a choose your own adventure, you know, you make your own committee, you really get a lot of intellectual freedom. To define your research in terms of like the boundary of it, but also methodologically what you want to do.

So, I really enjoyed that. And when I was at graduate school, I spent a lot of time with environmental anthropologists. I was advised by them. I took lots of classes. To classes in gender studies, sort of ended up finding my research becoming more and more social science oriented.

And so, today, I consider myself a political ecologist who definitely draws on, you know, my facility with technical thinking, but thinks much more about questions of environment and society and politics together rather than purely a technical question.

So yeah, that's kind of where I ended up where I, you know, how I ended up where I am.

That is very cir circuitous. You went to India, states, India, states, and then from one side of the states to the other. So you are in San Diego now, right?

Yes.

And what's what's your, your favorite?

Well, I mean, honestly, like, there are pros and cons to everywhere, but I have loved living in California. So I first moved to California in 2005 when I got my master's and I worked here for a few years. That was in the Bay Area. And I just, there's something about this place that I love.

My first tenure track job was at Cal Poly Humboldt in far northern California. Again, just another spectacular place. So, I kind of feel very, I'm very fond of the state of California. I've lived across its geography. And I love it.

I mean, having said that, my graduate school experience was wonderful on the East Coast as well, and I certainly enjoyed being in like the very academic environment of New England, you know, that's a whole other cultural space, intellectually cultural space.

But yeah, I just, there's something about California that I love. I mean, just that my everyday. Life, you know, I can see the ocean from my office. I, you know, in, in during lunchtime, I get to go on like a, a short hike in a canyon. I live 5 minutes, you know what I mean?

Like it's just, there's just so much to do here that involves being outside and yeah, I love it. I love, oh my gosh, I love living in San Diego.

That's great. Well, you have so much broad experience and locational knowledge, and so I'm really curious to learn more about the actual work that you're doing.

So, your current research focuses on energy access and climate change impacts, and one of them focuses on clean cooking energy. Access in India. What does that mean? Tell us about that.

Sure. So, I'm just finishing my first book project on this topic, which began as a PhD dissertation and, you know, it's certainly evolved since then.

So, basically, when we think about air pollution in the world, you know, typically we imagine cities and smoke, you know, that's the imagery we think of like New Delhi or Beijing. We think of like, Smoky skies, but half the air pollution exposures in the world actually happen in indoor home spaces, and they primarily happen when people, particularly low income families, cook using solid biomass fuels.

And this is a problem that, you know, development actors, public health people have worked on for a very long time, and it's not a problem that's unique to India. It's basically across. Multiple locations in the global South.

The research that I'm doing is trying to understand the perspective of household energy transitions that are in kitchens. So development actors are trying to change the way people cook in order to improve public health, mitigate climate change, provide other social benefits.

But, you know, there's been a very variegated success in sort of transitioning. Households to different technologies.

And I was very interested in trying to understand this whole question of household energy transitions from the perspectives of low-income women who are targeted for these development interventions, because I understood the health side and I understood the technical side of it, but I wanted to kind of center the perspectives of people whose homes and kitchens, you know, these projects were unfolding in.

And so this project is an ethnographic study that's trying to understand how do low-income people make everyday energy decisions with impacts on their health, impacts on climate change, and impacts for various social, you know, aspects of their life.

And a second piece of that project is about trying to understand. How sustainable development researchers do their work in the world through experiments in the ground, and how do people make evidence to create sustainability policy.

And so it, it was about, I was embedded in this research project. I was observing how the project unfolded. It was structured as a randomized control trial. So it was an experiment in the field.

So, I was trying to understand how do researchers take very messy on the ground, things that are happening and then translate them into scientific evidence to make sustainability policy. And so the book also ethnographically studies the process of making science for sustainability.

That is deep. A very like specific problem and then I love how you're approaching it. So what do you find is the thing that does get someone to change the way that they cook in these areas? That is a big question, or is that the question? There's still the verdict is still out on that.

Well, I mean, that is certainly a question that a lot of development actors are trying to answer, right? They're trying to, if one is coming from the perspective that I would like people to change the way they cook, then one wants to know how can I do that, right?

And so that's certainly a big question in the field. So I, I just want to acknowledge how big that question is, but also, I want to say that, you know, I want to offer the fact that during the time I was doing fieldwork for this project, There was also a huge national program launched to provide LPG, liquefied petroleum gas or propane gas fuels to families below the poverty line in India for free.

Over the last decade we've actually seen a huge increase in the number of people who have access to. What is considered a clean cooking fuel.

Now, there's certainly arguments about, you know, how can you call fossil fuels clean and what does it mean to be clean at the point of use versus the point of production, and, you know, there's a whole other debate and I can get into that if you want.

So, lessons from that might suggest that one way that you get people to adopt new technologies is to provide something they want for free. That's one way to think about it, right?

Another way to think about it is to focus on technologies that people are aspiring to, rather than a technology that might be good from like another point of view, you know, that might, here is just some sort of, another way to think about it is provide technologies that works within the context of their lives, you know.

Now, households that adopt LPG, they. They don't stop using a bunch of the other technologies they had in the first place.

And that's a whole other, you know, from the health side of things, people don't like that because that means they still have health effects from biomass. But from like an energy resilience strategy standpoint, I totally get it.

When I lived in Humboldt, we would have power shutoffs all the time, you know, because of the way PGNU operated the grid during wildfire season.

And I loved having a wood burning stove, so I could still feel, you know, warm, and I, I loved having a, a gas stove because I could still cook even when the power was out, you know, and people would come to my house, my colleagues would be like, can I come and shower in your house, because the boiler ran, you know what I mean, the boiler around gas.

And if you look at, and I, I, My other project in Humboldt worked with tribal communities in inland Humboldt, and they have wood stoves and enjoy having that ability to have energy separate from the grid.

So anyway, this is a long way of saying what's called stove stacking, meaning adopting new technologies, but keeping your old ones. I don't necessarily see it as a failure in the way that a public health person might, because I think it's a resilience strategy in a way.

Right, right. So, give me a specific example. What is the difference between the LPG gas and what have they been using?

Sure, so, biomass cookstoves, they can be in all kinds of different shapes and all kinds of different forms. Primarily it involves some sort of chamber in which you would put wood, crop residue, dung, something solid. You know, and then you would light it on fire.

So it's, it could be a wood burning stove, you know, that sort of thing. Materials vary, what it's made of, but in the context in which I was doing fieldwork in India, they were usually made of mud, a specific kind of mud, and in a way, it's also like, um, it's an artisanal thing.

Like people have a, you know, a technique. They use a specific kind of mud for the stove, and it has a specific way that you design it, and they don't look the same house to house, you know, some houses have more. Family members, they have bigger needs, so they've got more spaces for different pots, you know, some families have just a one pot stove, so it really varies.

It's quite flexible in terms of the way that it's used.

There's a wonderful new book out by Professor Mina Kandeawal, who's a feminist anthropologist who's looking at this idea of cook stoves as a feminist technology. And if you're interested, I can, if readers are interested, they should check it out.

Yeah, you never know, like, um. I think it's interesting too, because I feel like there's probably a lot of this is how we've always done it, or cultural sensitivity, you know, not only this is how we've always done it, but this has some sort of meaning or a sentimental attachment maybe to it as well.

For sure, for sure. And I think, you know, I, I see the whole spectrum of orientations to it.

On the one hand, you have some technical researchers and development. who think of it purely as a technical issue of like combustion efficiency, and if you can improve the combustion efficiency and, and think of cooking as a heat transfer, right?

But as you're pointing out, Laura, cooking and eating is about so much more than just imparting calories to transform properties and ingredients and then consuming them for energy. Like food is about so much more, right?

And then that, and so it has so much more meaning in life. And has so much more meaning to, you know, one's own sense of well-being, and one's sense of family, and one's sense of like, hospitality, you know, there's so much more associated with food.

On the other end of it, Laura, I'll say that there's also maybe, like, you know, some researchers have called this like a refractory bias against rural residents, like, in a way, thinking of them purely as being so wedded. To traditions as being so traditional and being so sentimental in a way perhaps that they're not rational actors, you know, who are adopting efficient cookstove, so I've seen the whole spectrum, you know what I mean?

And so in a way it's like, of course, the truth for any one person is probably somewhere in between that, right?

And we're all doing that. We're all, when you think about, you know, things we should be doing for our health. I'm sure we're all not perfect actors, you know, optimizing our. Health or environmental responsibility at any given moment, of course, we're trying to do the best we can, depending on what we believe, but, you know, there's a whole spectrum of action, and on any given day, we might do any one thing, right?

And so, yeah, so I guess partly what I'm trying to do through my book is, as much as I can, try to bring all these other voices to the fore.

Yeah, totally, and I mean, I just moved from an apartment with A regular gas range and not gas, but electric, and now I have gas. I've never really cooked with gas before and it doesn't work the same.

So it's, you're not only just asking somebody to change their, their fuel source, you're asking them to like, now you have to learn how to cook your food again.

So, I could see where they might even take the free thing and then use it for a week and be like, OK, this is taking too long, or this isn't coming out right now. I'm wasting food. I'm going to go back to the way I always did it.

For sure, for sure. There's like food cooking technique. There's also like what kind of vessels do I have? There's also how much time do I have to like figure this out or cook today, you know, there's like, also like really great strategy I see is like multitasking across all your devices, and we all do this, right, at breakfast, like you've got your toast going, you've got your kettle on, you've got, you know, whatever, cooking on the stove, you know, so you've got multiple devices you use for different things.

So, yeah, I see all of the above.

Yeah, absolutely. And so, the other work that you do, you're working on wildfires and air pollution and electric grid stuff, like, tell us about your other projects and how do you, after that, how do you stay organized on what you're, what research are you working on day to day?

Great question. OK, so first, let me tell you about how I got it started on my California project.

So, my first job after graduate school was as an assistant professor at Cal Poly Humboldt in Northern California, as I mentioned. And when I moved there, I had a chance to interact with some fabulous colleagues across the university.

One set of colleagues were in the Native American Studies Department, and then another set of colleagues were in the Schatz Energy Research Center.

And, you know, again, sort of this is a recurring theme of like trying to bridge or think together with technical folks as well as critical social science folks, right?

And what I was trying to do was understand how the energy grid, the things that I was experiencing in Northern California were a very tenuous electric grid and wildfires, and Basically, PG&E would turn off the electric grid, rightly so, because they wanted to reduce wildfire risk.

Um, and so, so what you have is a confluence basically of an aging electric grid that snakes through this landscape where you have, over time, there has been a buildup of flammable fuels in the landscape.

And that buildup has occurred due to a couple of different reasons, but one of the main reasons is that a lot of native land management practices. Have been criminalized and not been allowed to, you know, flourish in the ways that they were historically.

So, you basically have a lot more. Things that can burn in the landscape, and then you have a grid that is basically getting old and more likely to spark and cause fires, and then, you know, layered on top of that is that you have extended periods of drought and with climate change exacerbating how dry things are, and also how intense the wet seasons are.

So you have a lot more buildup during the wet season, and then you have a really dry period where. Everything is like much more likely to catch on fire.

So that's the sort of context in which we are seeing increasing wildfires in California.

So, it was at this time that I moved to Humboldt, and when the power shutoffs happened, what I learned was that, because, uh, the university and, and where I was living was on the coast, but inland, I learned that actually native communities regularly face. Grid shutdowns and that it was actually, you know, their electricity access was quite different from the way it was for the university or for somebody who lived on the coast.

And so then I started trying to understand historic inequalities in grid access in California and how Native American communities have experienced, uh, much poorer energy. Access than other communities have in California.

And so, you know, basically, I was in this context where then the Karu tribe and the Blue Lake Rancheria tribe were partnering with the Schatts Energy Research Center to try to think through how to build energy resilience in this place.

The Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe has a solar microgrid that provides energy resilience for that whole region.

And so, you know, I basically, it started off with these curiosities and questions about, I know about energy access and air pollution exposures in the global South. I know about it in India, and that's what I've been working on till now.

But here I am at my new job, and I find that actually those same themes were actually present, you know, right here. So thinking about inequalities in energy. Access and thinking about how, when you have unequal energy access, how that affects your air pollution exposures, in this case, not through cooking, but through wildfires.

So that was kind of the origin of that project and how I got involved with it was basically having some amazing colleagues across different places on campus who I wanted to work with and learn from, and it was, yeah, that's how I got involved with that.

Nice. Can we touch on that for a second?

So, I just went to the Ecological Society of America's conference, and there's a lot of students there, a lot of them hoping to get into academia and research, and how does this work?

You saw this problem, and he wanted to dive into it further, and then you just reached out to colleagues. First, for someone listening in who's like, I have an idea, like, how, how would you take that idea and then approach people?

Are you bringing them a proposal, an idea, just have like meeting. For a chat first. How does it work?

That is an excellent question. I will say that it works differently at different times. I can tell you how it worked for me on this specific instance, and perhaps that might spark ideas for folks.

So, the Sharts Energy Research Center, you know, that the center that I was collaborating with, had already been collaborating for a long time with the Blue Lake Rancheria and the Karo tribe.

So they already had a long-standing relationship of mutual trust with each other. And when I joined the university, I was someone who basically was interested in working on questions of energy.

And if you worked on energy, you know, there were so many colleagues at Charles's working on energy, it made sense for me to collaborate with them.

And I had an institutional affiliation with them that basically allowed me to start thinking of ways in which I could bring my methods and lenses to help with questions that maybe researchers there were also interested in.

So it was, it was really a very, like, Oh, this is what I'm thinking about. Like, what are you thinking about? And it was so it was a very sort of collaborative conversation on the academic side.

There was no way I can think of on my own, approaching, like the Karu tribe or the Brian Sharia tribe without sort of having my colleagues who already had that long relationship of trust, you know, so, it was because I was collaborating with Shats that allowed me to sort of be a part of this project with them.

So, that's how I got involved with that project.

With any community-based work, I think that that relationship of trust is really important.

And so, as an individual researcher, my suggestion would be to go try to build that trust to try to find an organization that already has been working for a long time in that community that has that relationship of trust, and seeing if, if you can be of service to them in some way, and then seeing if there's alignment in what they need, and perhaps, What you're interested in and, and finding a research project that's at the intersection of those things.

So, I think it's less about saying, here's what I'm interested in, and I'm gonna go do that in the world.

I think it's more about, here are some of the things I'm interested in. Here are some of the things that this community has expressed an interest in doing, you know, through their engagements with either community-based organizations or prior projects that they might have done or funding that they've sought before, and then seeing where there's an alignment between your interests and that, you know.

OK, that makes sense. And then at what point are you applying for grants to fund the projects, or at what point are you doing that?

This is an ongoing question for academic researchers. To do research, of course, costs money, so one has to, you know, get funding to do the research.

Different kinds of research cost different amounts of money, right? So, like, depending on the methods you use and the kinds of researcher you are, you may need bigger grants or smaller grants, or, you know, so there's like a whole range of, like the scale of funding one is talking about.

I would say that typically, like. This is like an iterative process. Like, usually, at least professors I know, constantly have ideas and questions that they've been thinking about or working on, and then they'll see a grant opportunity that comes up that addresses a piece of that, and then you'll apply for that grant, and you'll get a little further along in your quest on that, you know, topic.

And then you'll see an opportunity to collaborate with somebody who's actually doing a project on something else, but there's another piece of it that's actually relevant to you.

And, so it kind of, it's, it's a little bit piecemeal sometimes, and sometimes it's more, it's iterative, like, you know, and then also sometimes you see a funding opportunity and it sparks ideas for people.

As an assistant professor, usually when you get hired at a research university, certainly, you get a startup package, which gets you started on research funding. So that you can kind of hit the ground running, so that you don't have zero to begin with, because all of this takes time.

Like, in order to get a grant, you need to prove that you actually have done research before and that you have found some findings and you have done some publications before.

So it's kind of. Like a chicken and egg situation, like, in order to get the grant, you need to show that you've thought enough about this and you have some insights and questions. But in order for you to show that you've done something and have some questions, you need to have done some work on it already.

So it's kind of like a, that's what I mean by it's iterative, you know.

Yeah. Well, yeah, no, that's very helpful. I think for someone who's looking from the outside in trying to figure out what is my career going to look like. So I appreciate that.

But at the same time, you're doing all this, you are also juggling teaching classes. So tell us about the classes you teach.

Absolutely. So, one of the joys of being a professor is that. You get to hang out with, spend time with really smart, really passionate, and earnest students, you know, who, not always, but oftentimes care deeply about, you know, the things you're talking about in class.

And I, I feel lucky because I teach classes that really draw that kind of a, a very passionate student.

So I teach sustainable development. And then I teach gender and climate justice, and then I teach a class called Gender Technology and Development.

And, yeah, I'm not sure if maybe you've heard of this already, but UC San Diego has implemented a new climate change education requirement. Which means that every undergraduate student graduating in any major from UCSD will have to take at least one climate change class before they graduate.

Two of the classes that I teach qualify for that requirement.

So you certainly have some folks who are coming to the room saying, I don't know anything about climate change, but I need to get this requirement to get my degree, so I'm here.

And then you have, you know, a different kind of student who is like, I have been passionate about climate change since I first learned about it in elementary school, and I am. You know, I want to do everything I can. I want to dedicate my skills, my talents, my career to like solving this.

So you've got the whole spectrum of students, and I really enjoy teaching, you know, that wide range of students.

Yeah, that's pretty awesome. I think that's really cool that they're having people do that and because you, you don't really know stuff till you're exposed to it.

Even, even the students who aren't who I work with that I know are already. They know they want to do something, climate impact, but within even dialing in further within that, they don't, you don't know until you find the right class or the right project or the right person to open your eyes to something.

For sure, absolutely. And I think one of the things that we're trying to do, a few colleagues and I, is show that there's actually so many ways to contribute to climate action.

I think, you know, perhaps it's easier for some students to, to think that, OK, if I were a climate scientist or if I were like a, You know, a physicist or like an energy technology person that they could more easily see a path to like working on climate change, but actually, you know, a lot of the things that I'm trying to show is that if you're an artist, or you're a writer, or you're a journalist, or you're a policymaker, or a lobbyist, or a shoe designer, or, you know, what, like, there is no aspect of life that climate change does not touch.

Which also means that there is no contribution, like no angle or contribution that you can't actually take to, you know, using your skills and interests to having some sort of impact on it.

So, what I'm interested through my classes is to expose students to a social science and a humanist perspective to climate change.

So thinking about climate as a social issue and not purely a technical issue, yeah, that's been the focus in some of the classes I teach.

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. And the gender studies, does that cross over with anything environmental or climate, or are they two separate classes?

Absolutely. So the gender and climate justice class is very much bringing together how climate inequalities and gender inequalities are linked.

So thinking about sort of environmental inequality and social inequality in the world together. And that class is all about, well, how are these two things connected and linked?

So, I'm hired across urban studies and planning and Gender studies and students in gender studies really wanted more environmental and more climate-related classes.

And, you know, I think that's why my position was created and that's why I'm luckily able to focus on that aspect of gender.

And I've got some fabulous colleagues who work on many, many other different aspects of it and teach. Different, you know, fabulous different classes.

And in urban studies and planning too, you know, we've got a whole range of colleagues and some, you know, people teach all kinds of things and I'm focused more on environment and climate, even within that urban studies and planning.

So, in a way, I'm able to bring my expertise to two different contexts and it's been welcome in both of those contexts.

Yeah, that's great.

And OK, on top of that, you are also a parent. So, OK, so now I'm asking, how do you juggle parenting? Classes, research, and multiple projects and keep your head on straight.

Oh, yes, I, uh, I'm a parent to a toddler, and she's great. She's super fun and curious and just a real pleasure to hang out with.

I struggle to answer that because I, I don't want it to come across that I've sort of figured out the answer to your question, and that's not, that's not the case.

I think it's an ongoing thing, you know, honestly, I felt like I didn't have enough time to do all the things I wanted to do before I became a parent, and I continue to feel that way.

I will say that I'm lucky to have amazing childcare at the university where I work. It's not cheap, but it's very good.

And so, you know, I'm lucky also that I have a livelihood that enables me to pay for good quality childcare.

I'm lucky that I have a job that, apart from specific class timings and meeting timings, has a lot of flexibility with regards to when I do my work, and so I'm able to juggle things.

I think I'm also lucky in that I really love what I do, so it doesn't feel like I'm having to sacrifice anything when I do my work.

So it's all of those things combined. I also have a support. Supportive partner who is, you know, equal in every sense of the word.

So we, we definitely sort of split up all of the domestic work, you know, across parenting, across just staying alive, across cooking. I have two cats, you know, across cat care, across, you know, everything.

And so I think it helps to have a, a team, you know, a team, like a partner, good childcare, good colleagues who understand what it's like to be a. Young parent, a parent or a young child, and, you know, resources.

Yeah, no, I think it's a great answer. I think for others that are feeling like, I don't know how I can do all of this, the answer is you still figure it out, right?

Yes, yes. And I think also that one of the things that's, that I had expected would happen, but I'm also still floored by how intensely true this is, which is that everyone's experience of being a parent is so different.

The personality of your child is different, the personality of you is different, your life circumstances are different, you know, how you handle. Lack of sleep or stress or any, any one thing, or how you handle the stresses of work or deadlines, all of this is so different that it's hard to think of like universal solutions, but I think a little bit of really using your resources to make your life easier for you, using whatever resources you have to make your life easier for you, I would advocate that.

And I, I think one of the other things I think about is that everything is a season in life, you know, and there's like a season of your life when your child's needs are so intense, and then there's going to be. Season of your life when you are so uncool to them that they want nothing to do with you and they just want to hang out with their own friends, you know.

And there's a season of life where your work is really intense, you know, I'm pre-tenure faculty. So that means that, you know, I, I really have to make sure I'm publishing well and adequately enough to meet my tenure requirements.

So there's a seasonality to my academic career as well, where things are very intense.

When you start teaching a class, it's a lot of work, and then you sort of dial it in. So there's a seasonality to teaching as well.

So yeah, everything in life has its season, and, you know, something that is like really hard for you today, won't be that hard 6 months from now.

Yeah, I felt, you know, Nic just had his, you know, this was a few weeks back since this came out, but Nic just had his first child, and so I feel like I'm just going to clip this out of here and send it to him.

If it's, if it's helpful, I mean, you know, well, first of all, congratulations to your colleague and, and I hope everyone's doing well there.

Yeah, but those initial few months are really intense. I think especially for the birthing parent, like, it's really intense.

Yeah. We, uh, we hope all is still well 33 weeks later, but we're at the point in our show. Called Field Notes.

It's the partner show where we talk to our guests about memorable moments doing the work in the field. So it's one of the things that connects us all as environmental professionals.

So we ask our listeners to send us your funny, scary, or awkward or otherwise just memorable moments doing the work to info@environmentalprofessionalsradio.com or just head over to the website, fill out the form.

So DeP, I think, you know, you've been all over the world doing all types of research. So does anything come to mind?

Yeah, I'm trying to sift through, like, I'm literally viscerally like transporting myself across different field sites to try to like pick one or two things to say to you.

I think one of the things that I mean, I've had the pleasure of doing fieldwork in rural Himachal Pradesh, which are the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, and there's just something about the stillness of being. In a mountain range and being, you know, like, in the presence of, I think relatively speaking, the Himalayas are young mountains, but even young mountains are really old, you know, um, just like being in the presence of like, just that kind of a landscape.

There's something about that that I think is, there's a word that I, I really think about a lot, it's called enchantment.

I think there's a, there's something about the affective dimension, like the way that you feel, the way that your body feels, you know, being in an environment that is so unique and different and awe inspiring in a way.

And there's, there's something about that that I really try, that stillness and that awe that I try to carry with me. me.

Yeah, that's just spectacular, you know, and it's, what's amazing is that, you know, like, I was lucky enough to do fieldwork there.

That's, you know, dotting those mountains are homes, communities, and people going about their everyday life, and, you know, that's just their front patio, or like, you know, that's the view from their kitchen, you know, it's amazing.

Yeah, that is pretty cool. And uh I can't even imagine how deeply enchanting that probably is.

All right, and we're getting close to our time, but I did want to ask you another thing that we ask our guests about are things that they do when they're not working.

So, since you have a toddler, I'm sure you do a lot of time just toddler chasing, but uh you also like to cook, which it probably helps your research, and also reading, oh, and you play cello too, so I also play cello a little bit, but um it's been a while.

That's awesome. When did you start learning?

I started in 6th grade. And then I played up until 9th grade when they cut the strings program from my high school.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Somewhere in my adulthood, I bought one and now I stare at it daily.

Hey, that's progress, if at least you look at it in my brain.

My teacher used to say you have to at least touch it every day, and that, you know, gets you closer to the practice.

And I think that's the same that, you know, people advise for writing or any project that feels enormous, like you touch your that project every day.

Yeah, I started learning the cello in the pandemic. I had always wanted to learn a string instrument, and I never had.

And it felt like I, I had always told myself that, OK, when I finished the PhD I'll, you know, that'll be like my reward is I'll learn a string instrument.

And I finished my PhD in December 2019, and as we all know, a couple of months after that, you know, the world kind of came to a standstill in a way.

And uh yeah, so it just felt like a really like different thing to do.

I love the sound of the cello. It's so calming and it's so, I just love the way you have to hold it, and it's so grounding, you know, and the sound of it, it's like this wonderfully deep and rich tone.

And I started learning it. I don't sound good at all because I'm, I'm, I'm a beginner. I mean, I started learning the cello, you know, like, very much as an adult, you know, I had this wonderful teacher who teaches both children and adults, and it's kind of amazing actually, because like you have a 5 year old and they can just play like Bach concertos, like it's extraordinary.

And then you have like those of us trying to play Mary Had a Little.

But it's been fun. It's like a, I think it's like activates a different part of the brain and activates a different part, like you, you know, you have to use your body in a different way.

And most of my work when I'm writing and thinking is so cerebral, right? That it's like nice to have this other thing that's, there's certainly a big part of the brain in it, but it's also. Like a physical skill to like learn to, you know, create a beautiful sound from this piece of wood.

And so, yeah, I, in the last couple of years, I haven't had much time to practice.

So I aspire to get to where you are, Laura, look at it every day. I'm not there yet.

I'm really literally just one step ahead of you.

But, um, but I hope to be able to, you know, get back into that.

Nice, yeah, I mean, it's the perfect choice if hanging out at the base of the mountains is enchanting, then cello was the perfect enchanting instrument to choose, so that makes a lot of sense, but um we are out of time, so is there anything else that you would like to talk about before we end the interview?

I think there's just one thing, like I have, you know, something that I think about a lot, which is this idea of optimism or hope in like, you know, for people who work in the environmental field or people who might care about climate change.

And, you know, I have like, friends and colleagues who don't work in this field, like they work in tech or they work, you know, they're doctor or whatever, like other people, and they're like, well, isn't it all just doomed? I mean, like, how do you even have any energy to get up and, and do any work?

And I actually, when I interact with my students, I see like a really fired up, really smart, really inspiring, passionate generation of people who are like coming into their own in the world and And that's what gives me hope.

And so, yeah, I don't feel like beaten down and jaded. I think it's, I can, I can totally understand why one might, but if I allowed myself to feel that also, it would be very hard to do my work, right?

So there's that element to it too.

Um, so I think it's a balance between like, Taking in information that informs you, that informs your work, but also thinking about, like, being a professional in the environmental world, being a professional who works on, you know, something to do with environmental change and climate change, you know, whatever you may be in that spectrum.

And I think about the emotional work it takes to be in that space when you care deeply about something, and it might feel like, you know, it's hard to find hope or it's hard to, you know, feel like anything you do makes a difference because the issues are so big or so multifaceted, or, you know, things are stacked against you, whatever.

And there's like a whole spectrum of reasons why I understand why people may feel hopeless, but actually, like what I try to convey. to my students in the classroom is that, you know, just look around this room, like, look how fired up all of you are, and how passionate you are and how skilled you are, you know, and so that gives me hope.

Yes, the young people that I meet are way less accepting of all of the garbage that has been allowed previously. So if that makes sense, but, but yeah, I think they're a little more aware.

But it makes sense though, they have access to information we didn't have, so there, they seem to be many, I mean, there's just as many maybe not using making good use of that information, but there are so many who are, so yeah, I agree with you.

Yeah, so I think there's calls for hope.

Yes, I agree. And yeah, so if you're listening and you're a young person, we're counting on you.

And Deepti, last question, where can people get in touch with you?

So, email is the best way to get in touch with me. My email address is D C H A T TI@ UCSD.edu.

If you Google me and UCSD, you'll find a website where you can read more about my work and also see my email address listed on there, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. This was so fun.

That's our show. Thank you, Deepti for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday.

Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review.

Bye.

See you everybody.