Joshua Russell

With a background in environmental education and human-animal studies, Dr. Russell is passionate about teaching and learning related to environmental issues, our relationships with animals in our lives, and social issues related to conservation and sustainability. His research is focused mainly on children's relationships with animals that involve death, loss, or suffering, including the loss of pets, hunting and fishing, agricultural use of animals, and wider environmental concerns like species loss and climate change. Dr. Russell also does research and writing using queer theory, to critically question the goals and moral directions of environmental education and conservation work. He has various publications in anthrozoological volumes and environmental education journals. In the classroom, Dr. Russell uses popular education methods like storytelling, group discussion, and artistic methods to engage students as partners in looking at and addressing difficult questions about human-animal relationships and larger movements such as conservation or sustainability. 

Awards

• Vogt Foundation Community Grant
• Culture and Animals Foundation Research Grant
• Canisius College Dean's Summer Research Grant
• Animals & Society Institute Human-Animal Studies Fellowship
• John Livingston Ecological Conscience Award

Publications

Russell, J. (2021). Queer Ecopedagogies: Explorations in Nature, Sexuality, and Education. Springer Nature.

Russell, J. (2020). "Telling better stories: Toward critical, place-based, and multispecies narrative pedagogies in hunting and fishing cultures." The Journal of Environmental Education, doi: 10.1080/00958964.2019.1641064

Russell, J. (2019). "Attending to nonhuman animals in pedagogical relationships and encounters." In T. Lloro-Bidart & V. Bansbach (eds)., Animals in Environmental Education. Palgrave Macmillan. 

Russell, J. & Fawcett, L. (2019). “On Child/Animal Vulnerability and an Embodied Pedagogy of Conviviality.” In A. Cutter-Mackenzie, K. Malone, & E. Barratt-Hacking (eds)., International Research Handbook on ChildhoodNature. Springer Publishing.

Russell, J. (2017). ““Everything has to die one day:” children’s explorations of the meanings of death in human-animal-nature relationships.” Environmental Education Research, 23(1), 75-90.