Speaker to Present 'Saving the Environment One Story at a Time' on Campus

DUBUQUE, Iowa - Emma Frances Bloomfield, PhD, will examine storytelling, dialogue, and collaboration as vehicles for engaging people in sustainability and climate advocacy at a presentation, titled "Saving the Environment One Story at a Time," from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Monday, April 7, 2025, in Blades Chapel, Blades Hall on the University of Dubuque campus.

The event is free and open to the public.

Bloomfield, an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), is a rhetorician who studies environmental communication and scientific controversies. She is the author of Science v Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators (University of California Press, 2024) and Communication Strategies for Climate Skepticism: Religion and the Environment (Routledge, 2019). Additionally, Bloomfield is the founder and director of the Public Communication Initiative. Housed in the UNLV's Greenspun College of Urban Affairs, the initiative fosters community partnerships around addressing local needs such as heat resilience and environmental justice.

"Saving the Environment One Story at a Time" is supported by UD's Wendt Character Initiative, which is devoted to promoting a campus culture of excellent moral character and purposeful lives characterized by integrity, justice, and compassion; and by Dubuque County Watersheds, which strives to empower and support residents in taking responsibility for the well-being of shared watersheds. The Department of Natural and Applied Sciences and Office of Academic Affairs at UD collaborated with the Wendt Character Initiative and Dubuque County Watersheds to host the event.

"In a time when conflicting messages compete for our attention, Emma Bloomfield provides tools designed to build shared relationships and deescalate tensions surrounding scientific topics. By showcasing the communication strategies of storytelling, dialogue, and collaboration, Bloomfield demonstrates how stories foster connections across differences in perspectives surrounding society's most contentious issues, including climate change," said Kaycie Lawson, PhD, assistant professor of environmental science at UD.