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Noel Healy, associate professor of geography at Salem State, was recently awarded a prestigious Rachel Carson Center (RCC) Writing Fellowship from Ludwig Maximilian’s University of Munich (LMU). The is a joint institution of LMU, the Deutsches Museum (the largest science and technology museum in the world), and the German Ministry of Education and Research. In 2017 LMU was ranked 30th best university in the world.

Professor Healy will spend six months of his sabbatical at LMU, along with a research period at the Departmental of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. In Munich, Healy will collaborate with LMU faculty on his research project entitled, “Overcoming Carbon Lock-in: Fossil fuel Divestment, the Energiewende and the opening of alternative energy pathways”.

This aim of professor Healy’s writing project is threefold: (1) investigate the fossil fuel divestment movement as a novel form of global energy politics (2) explore the intersection between the delegitimization of fossil fuels and nascent field of energy justice, and (3) examine lessons learned from Energiewende and how they might apply to the US (at the state level) and a ‘global energy turn’. 

Professor Healy expressed delight at the award along with emphasizing the importance of his research area — “non-state action such as fossil fuel divestment and societal actions which challenge the fossil fuel regime are critical given the recent announcement of the federal government's plans to withdraw from the Paris Agreement”. Healy also cited much of the great work the department of geography was conducting in the areas of environmental sustainability, climate change, and social justice.