Faculty Profile
Sharon Moran

Associate Professor

Department of Environmental Studies
256 Marshall Hall

smoran@esf.edu
315-470-6690

Affiliations

• Faculty Affiliate, Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC), Maxwell School of Citizenship, Syracuse University
• Research Associate Professor, Department of Religion, Syracuse University
• Affiliated Faculty, Department of Geography, The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University
• Co-director and Partner Faculty, CASSE (Certificate of Advanced Study in Sustainable Enterprise, Syracuse University and SUNY ESF)

Education

• Ph.D., Geography, Clark University, 2000
• M.S., Political Science and Public Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• B.A., Chemistry, Boston University

Research Interests

• Political ecology; environment-society relations
• ‘Green’ and innovative technologies; sustainable enterprise
• Human dimensions of water/ wastewater issues; policy and regulation
• Post-communist countries - environmental issues
• Qualitative research methods

Graduate Students

Note: Prof. Moran’s graduate students are enrolled in either ESF's (1) Dept. of Environmental Studies OR

(2) GPES (Graduate Program in Environmental Sciences).

Sarah Nahar
senahar@syr.edu

• Degree Sought: PHD
• Graduate Advisor(s): Moran
• Area of Study: Human Dimensions of the Environment

Graduate Research Topic
The toilet, both the ritual and the receptacle. It will be an investigation of how worldviews, practices, histories, and orienting stories influence the entrenched use of the freshwater-flush toilet and sewage system, plus decolonial methods of addressing the global sanitation crisis.

Favorite Quote
"There is no one I can't learn something from." - Brazilian liberation theologian Ivone Gebara

Goal
Together with Dr. Moran, Dr. Phillip P. Arnold at Syracuse University, and administrators at both schools, I am crafting a joint PhD in Religion and Environmental Studies. The aim of this work is to connect, on the deepest levels, the teaching areas and academic conversations between religious studies (as in the study of the way people make meaning, do rituals, repeat practices, tell orienting stories, and participate other collective sociological phenomenon that sustain existential systems) with the places, ecosystems, ecologies, and more-than-human they are in relationship with. The bifurcation of these two areas of study does not exist in much of the lived experience of people around the world, especially indigenous people. Given that they are about 15% of the world's population and are stewarding 85% of the world's "natural resources" there is much to learn, and, I think, much to change about how we study what we study.

Research Highlights

• Citizen Science: Research projects on helping unpack people's knowledge and awareness about contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in lakes. The ways people understand ‘the environment’ in places they inhabit will make or break our future on this planet.
   
• Coastal issues: The NOAA-Sea Grant Coastal Storms Awareness Program // Understanding Responses to Storm Warnings: Learning from Those Who "Rode Out" Hurricane Sandy
  • William Peace and Dr. Sharon Moran re CSAP research
• Wasteful cultivation: Engaging the water cycle in everyday life?
   
• What do we want in our watersheds?

Selected Publications

• Wang, Shiru, Monica Matt, Bethany L. Murphy, MaryGail Perkins, David A. Matthews, Sharon D. Moran, and Teng Zeng. 2020. Organic Micropollutants in New York Lakes: A Statewide Citizen Science Occurrence Study. Environmental Science & Technology, October, Vo. 54, no. 21,  pp. 13759-13770    https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.0c04775)
• Nahar, Sarah and Sharon Moran. 2020. Local communities in water and sanitation: Practices and challenges, in Filho, W. L.,  Azul, A. M., Brandi, L, Lange Salvia, A., and Wall, T., eds. Clean Water and Sanitation Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, London, UK: Springer Nature.   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70061-8_141-1
• Moran, Sharon, Meredith Perreault, and Richard Smardon. 2019. Finding Our Way: A Case Study of Urban Waterway Restoration and Participatory Process, Landscape and Urban Planning, November, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.08.004
• Smardon, Richard, Sharon Moran, and April Baptiste. 2018, Revitalizing Urban Waterway Communities: Streams of Justice. Routledge.  https://www.routledge.com/Revitalizing-Urban-Waterway-Communities-Streams-of-Environmental-Justice/Smardon-Moran-Baptiste/p/book/9781138698611
• Comer, Bryan and Sharon Moran. 2017. The Evolution of Empirical Environmental Justice Research Methods: A Call for Greater Use of Geographically Weighted Regression, Environmental Justice, February, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 11-15.
• Leah Harnish, Adam T. Carpenter, and Sharon Moran. 2016. Comparing Water Source Knowledge in Cities that Exceed the Lead Action Level. Journal of the American Water Works Association, December, vol. 108, no. 12, pp. 606-614  http://dx.doi.org/10.5942/jawwa.2017.109.0015
• Marlon, Jennifer, E. Christa Farmer, and Sharon Moran. 2015. Communicating Hurricane Risks: Challenges and Recommendations. November. Eos (Transactions, American Geophysical Union).https://eos.org/meeting-reports/communicating-hurricane-risks-challenges-and-recommendations#.VlTHLmnww8s.email
• Magnuszewski, Artur, Edyta Kiedrzynska, Marcin Kiedrzynski, and Sharon Moran. 2014. GIS Approach to Estimation of the Total Phosphorous Transfer in the Pilica River Lowland Catchment. Quaestiones Geographicae. September, 33(3) 101-110.   doi 10.2478/quageo-2014-0033
• Magnuszewski, Artur, Sharon Moran. 2014. Vistula River bed erosion processes and their influence on Warsaw's flood safety.In Sediment Dynamics: From the Summit to the Sea, Proceedings of the Symposium of International Commission on Continental Erosion, IAHS 367.Wallingford, UK: IAHS Press. doi:10.5194/piahs-367-147-2015
• Dimpfl, Mike and Sharon Moran. 2014. "Waste matters: Compost, domestic practice, and the transformation of alternative toilet cultures around Skaneateles, NY," Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32: 721-738.
• Dimpfl, Mike and Sharon Moran. 2011. "Composting toilet," in Green Technology: An A–Z Guide, eds. Paul Robbins and Dustin Mulvaney. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Press.
• Moran, Sharon. 2010. "Cities, Creeks, and Erasure: Stream Restoration and Environmental Justice," Environmental Justice, June 2010, 3(2): 61-69.
• Magnuszewski, Artur, Sharon Moran, and Guoliang Yu. 2010. "Modeling Lowland Reservoir Sedimentation Conditions and Potential Environmental Consequences of Dam Removal: Wloclawek Reservoir, Vistula River, Poland." Pp. 8-16 in Sediment Dynamics for a Changing Future, ed. Kazimierez Banasik. Proceedings of the Symposium of International Commission on Continental Erosion. Publication 337. Wallingford, UK: IAHS Press. Available here.
• Moran, Sharon. 2009. "Bytes of Note - The State of the Toilet," Environment 51(11 November): 7-8. Available here.
• Moran, Sharon. 2008. "Under the Lawn: Engaging the Water Cycle," Ethics, Place, and Environment 11(2): 129-145.
• Moran, Sharon. 2007. "Stream Restoration Projects: A Critical Analysis of Urban Greening," Local Environment 12(2): 111-128.
• Moran, Sharon. 2003. "Stream Restoration: Opportunities for Synthesis and Integration," Journal of Geography 102(2, March-April): 67-79.
• Moran, Sharon. 2003. "Review of 'The Carbon Wars' by Jeremy Leggett," Economic Geography 79:1 (January).
• Moran, Sharon. 2002. "Teaching Stream Restoration: A Senior Seminar Theme". In Teaching Sustainability at Universities: Toward Curriculum Greening, ed. Walter Leal Filho. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

Courses

• EST 204 Diversity and Knowledge of the Environment (undergraduate)
• EST 296 Outdoor Skills / Introduction to Wilderness Awareness and Fieldcraft (Maymester, field course)
• EST 696   Deconstructing Environmental Despair (graduate, 1 credit)
• EST 600  Foundations of Environmental Studies (graduate)
• EST 652  Managing Sustainability (graduate)
• EST 759  Sustainability Driven Enterprise (graduate)
• EST 796  Environmental Health Policy (graduate)
• EST 797  Comparative Environmental Policy: US-Canada (graduate)
• ENS 797  Environmental Health Policy (graduate)
• EST 797  Human Dimensions of Water Systems (graduate)
• EST 797  Human Dimensions of Dirty Water (graduate)
• EST 797  Human Dimensions of Water Problems (graduate)
• EST 321  Government and the Environment (undergraduate)

Professional Associations

• Association of American Geographers
• Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences
• International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture 
• Society for the Social Study of Science (4S)
• Society for the History of Technology
• American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies

Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Enterprise with SU and ESF

Certificate of Advanced Study in Sustainable Enterprise (CASSE)