Gavin Lamb
sociolinguist: conservation, tourism, environmental communication, climate knowledge networks, sea turtles & seals🐢🦭| Associate Professor @NHH | Researcher @NORCE | PhD @uhmanoa | new book: multispecies discourse analysis
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- part 2 of this book has several chapters worth checking out on histories of environmental movements in Hawai‘i. www.dukeupress.edu/a-nation-ris...
- in case you weren't aware of r/petswithbuttons!🐈 "My cat has started to use 'vacuum' as a curse word": "For example, he will ask for "snackie” when we JUST got done with snackie and I will say “snackie all done” and then he will go spam the vacuum button." languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72193...
- Animal-Computer Interaction: The emergence of a discipline www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- New report from Eurocities "While most cities rely on municipal revenue (87%) and EU funding (83%) for climate adaptation, only around 50% have or are developing a dedicated financing strategy. Alarmingly, 28% said national or local regulations prevent them from accessing certain types of funding."
- Interesting new free course in ecolinguistics & environmental communication from UN SDG:Learn!🌿: The Search for New Stories to Live By: Econarrative and Ethical Leadership www.unsdglearn.org/courses/the-...
- "Deborah Cameron, former professor of language and communication at Oxford university, said using terms for staff that are “so out of step with what most people think your business is” risked attracting “incomprehension or ridicule”. www.ft.com/content/6689...
- "During the next year AI LEARN will be hiring approximately 25 PhD, Postdoc, and Researcher positions in a variety of fields at locations: NTNU (Trondheim, Norway), University of Bergen (Bergen, Norway), University of Oslo (Oslo, Norway), and the University of Murcia (Murcia Spain)."
- Scientists explore underwater calls of Hawaiian monk seals: “We found that wild Hawaiian monk seals are producing lots of vocalizations all of the time,” said Kirby Parnell, a PhD candidate with the Marine Mammal Research Program."
- Reading today!📚 "In River Life and the Upspring of Nature Naveeda Khan examines the relationship between nature and culture through the study of the everyday existence of chauras, the people who live on the chars (sandbars) within the Jamuna River in Bangladesh." #ethnography
- "when subsequently forming advice on the topic based on their search, those who learn from LLM syntheses (vs. traditional web links) feel less invested in forming their advice, and, more importantly, create advice that is sparser, less original and ultimately less likely to be adopted by recipients"
- Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other. Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq
- "Can AI translate Native languages in times of disaster? In the wake of Typhoon Halong, an AI language company wants to hire Native translators, raising questions about data sovereignty."
- "Experts have attributed the rise in attacks partly to climate change, with storms wreaking havoc on vegetation like beech trees, which produce the nuts that bears depend on. Bears have grown increasingly brazen in their quest for calories, venturing into urban centers in search of scraps."
- reminded me of this story from a few years ago: "Understandably, not everyone is excited about an Italian version of a grizzly bear showing up in their backyard, and a team of carefully selected “bear ambassadors” works hard to convince locals of the value of their polarizing neighbor."
- Job!📣 "The Script Encoding Initiative (SEI) in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley invites applications for a two-year postdoctoral scholar position. The postdoc will contribute to an NSF-funded project on the politics of digitizing newly-invented writing systems"
- Job!📣 "The Department of Anthropology...University of Miami, invites applications for a faculty position in anthropological linguistics to begin August 15, 2026. The rank of the appointment is tenure-track assistant professor to tenure-eligible associate professor, as appropriate."
- Interesting Sociolinguistics PhD Winter School in Copenhagen coming up 9 - 13 March 2026! phdcourses.dk/Course/136039
- 📣Conference: "44th International Sea Turtle Society (ISTS) Symposium will be held in Kailua-Kona, Hawaiʻi 28 Feb - 6 March 2026" (Abstracts due tomorrow, 29 October!) www.ists-symposium44.org
- Job! Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, Davidson College, NC. "We are particularly interested in candidates whose teaching experience encompasses public speaking, intercultural and/or international communication, communication theory, research methods..."
- I am leading graduate students through a discussion on effective writing practices. How do you push through writer’s block when it hits you? Please share your tips!
- @raulpachecovega.bsky.social always has lots of good tips on this!
- "....authors addressing reviewers using second-person pronouns receive fewer questions, shorter responses, and more positive feedback. Further analyses suggest that this shift in the review process occurs because “you” (vs. non-“you”) usage creates a more personal and engaging conversation."
- "Other terms officials must ditch include “energy transition,” “sustainability/sustainable,” “‘clean’ or ‘dirty’ energy,” “Carbon/CO2 ‘Footprint’” and “Tax breaks/tax credits/subsidies.”
- ClimateWeekNYC was a refreshing break, but don't forget for a moment where we actually are right now: here's the newest update on banned words in the US government 🤯 Full article here: www.politico.com/news/2025/09...
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- Reading today!📚 A review of research into Arctic tourism. "Instead of dwelling on the question of what Arctic tourism is, the review proceeds to inquire how the Arctic comes to matter for tourism research and what we, as scholars and practitioners of tourism, can learn from a focus on the Arctic."
- Listening today!🎧 "In this episode, we look at how human-made sound makes it hard for other creatures to listen and communicate." #bioacoustics
- Conference! The next International Conference on Ecolinguistics will be in Rennes next year (9-11 July, 2026). I'm looking forward to attending as part of the organizing committee. Consider submitting an abstract before the deadline on October 1st!
- "The majority of the island’s acreage has been in private hands since 1909, when businessman William Irwin bought it for $1. The island’s next overlord, James Dole, developed Lānaʻi into the world’s most productive pineapple plantation..."
- Job!📢: "The Michigan State University School of Journalism seeks an assistant professor in environmental journalism. The faculty member would work with the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism..." careers.msu.edu/jobs/assista...
- "...research on topics such as constructive journalism, solutions journalism, solidarity journalism, decolonial journalism, ethnographic journalism, Indigenous and community media, ethics of care, inclusive science communication, and other transformative approaches to environmental storytelling."
- Reading today!📚: "...Researchers charting pathways towards strong sustainability, including in passenger transport, need more nuanced data and methods than are currently widespread."
- This is an absolutely brilliant paper that I can only recommend to all those interested in transport poverty/equity but also in sustainable transport/climate, and on how to reconcile the two. I can only hope that it will have the impact it deserve doi.org/10.1016/j.er...
- "This commentary argues that sociophonetic perception studies and linguistic anthropological analyses of the listening subject examine the same underlying process—ideologically structured listening—though at different observational scales."
- Reading today!📚 "How to build a food sovereignty lab: Bureaucracy and budget constraints couldn’t stop CalPoly Humboldt’s Native American Studies Department from founding an Indigenous foods research lab." www.hcn.org/issues/57-9/... @highcountrynews.org
- "Meanwhile, if everyone on Earth planted a tree— 8 billion trees— it would take us back in time by about 43 hours every year, once the trees had matured. The time-machine analogy reveals just how futile CDR currently is. We have to shift the narrative as a matter of urgency."
- From things I've seen recently, I think many people would benefit from reading this. It's short, and it's free. 👉 rdcu.be/dbFbB
- Enjoyed visiting the University of Luxembourg campus this past week! When the steel mill there was shut down in the late 90's, it was converted into a new campus and integrated into the university's architecture. Gives a bit of a sci-fi/steampunk vibe🏭
- Also, public transport is free in Luxembourg!🇱🇺 why isn’t this a thing everywhere?
- Job!📣🌿 Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy: "Ph.D. Required in Public Policy, Public Administration, Political Science, Law, Economics, Sociology, Environmental Studies, Environmental Science and Engineering, or a related field by the start of appointment."
- Reading today!📚🚀 "This paper uses Star Trek's “Universal Translator” (UT) as a point of departure for considering the imagined future of mediated linguistic interactions and of contact across difference." anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
- job!📢 "Haverford College invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Linguistics, with a primary specialization in Sociolinguistics..." (deadline October) www.haverford.edu/provost/news...
- Conference!📣🇿🇦: Sociolinguistics Symposium 26 (SS26) Conference Theme: Sociolinguistic Consonance and Dissonance in the Pluriversal World, 13-15 July 2026. Hosted by University of Fort Hare, East London campus, Eastern Cape South Africa (abstract deadline 31 October) www.ufh.ac.za/sociolinguis...
- Exploring the mountains around Bergen a bit with a much more energetic hiking buddy
- "Since 1800, there’s been a sharp decline in nature-related words in English language books. It closely matches a simulation of nature–human interactions." A new piece in @grist.org by Kate Yoder, with some #ecolinguistics input from @repoole.bsky.social grist.org/language/nat...
- "It’s not just we’re talking about nature less; the feelings behind those words have also changed, according to Robert Poole, a professor of English at [UA], 'I want to know not how many times we say it,' he said, 'but when we do invoke it, are we saying it’s beautiful, distant, deadly, savage?'"
- Assistant Professor - Language Revitalization - Linguistics, UC Berkeley: research interests or skills in "..language documentation, description, and analysis; sociolinguistics; anthropological linguistics; language acquisition; language education; areal and language-family expertise" (Oct 31)
- reading today!📚🤖 Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination, by Webb Keane. Nicely engages with a lot of old and new work in (linguistic) anthropology on human-animal interaction!🐢 also just learned what a 'deodand' is too
- reading today!📚 "Econarrative: Ethics, Ecology and the search for New Narratives to Live by"
- There's also a free online course just out based on the book: www.storiescourse.org/new
- Reading today from a forthcoming theme issue on multispecies landscapes!📚🌱: "Eucalyptus histories and futures: Living and dying with hydrological infrastructures". "For the most part, the watery places where these trees once were found, have today either been drowned or dried."
- reading today📚🌿: "Seaweeds and sovereignty: Governance gaps and self-determination within limu stewardship in Hawai’i": "This paper examines the subtle place of everyday agency and political sovereignty within coastal resource management and governance of limu (seaweeds) in Hawai’i."
- Sunday walk up the mountain⛰️😅
- "A major trade group representing cruise lines from around the world is suing to stop key elements of Hawaiʻi’s landmark green fee, which will soon start charging their passengers for time spent in port to help the state combat environmental harm and climate change" www.civilbeat.org/2025/08/crui...
- 📢Call for papers: The 8th International Conference on Ecolinguistics will take place from 9th to 11th July 2026 in Rennes, France...ICE-8 aims to provide a dynamic and stimulating space for sharing ecolinguistic research and practices. #ecolinguistics
