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Dr. Timon McPhearson to Deliver 2020 Barry Commoner Lecture on the Environment

February 02, 2020
  • Dr. Timon McPhearson
On Tuesday, March 10, Timon McPhearson, Ph.D., Director of the Urban Systems Lab and Associate Professor of Urban Ecology at The New School, will deliver the 2020 Barry Commoner Lecture on the Environment.

His talk, titled Urban Futures: Building a Science of Cities for Resilience and Sustainability, will explore the ways in which cities can and must be the engines of innovation and the leaders of climate change adaptation efforts.

Dr. Timon McPhearson is Director of the Urban Systems Lab and Associate Professor of Urban Ecology at The New School in New York City. He is a Senior Research Fellow at The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and Associate Research Fellow at Stockholm Resilience Centre. As an IPCC Lead Author, he focuses on urban adaptation and resilience in cities.

In 2019 he was awarded the Sustainability Science Award and the Innovation in Sustainability Science Award by the Ecological Society of America. He co-leads the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) “Urban Resilience to Extreme Weather Related Events” Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) in the US and Latin America, the NATURA network on “Nature-based Solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene.”

He is published widely in scientific journals (Nature, Nature Climate Change, Nature Sustainability, BioScience), books (e.g. Urban Planet), popular press (The Nature of Cities), and in the press (The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, New York Times Magazine, CityLab, Urban Omnibus and others).

Join us for the 2020 Barry Commoner Lecture on the Environment:

Tuesday, March 10, 2020
Lecture: 2:30–3:30 pm
Reception: 3:45–4:45pm
Location: The Theresa Lang Theatre at Marymount Manhattan College
221 E. 71st Street, New York, NY 10021


The Barry Commoner Lecture on the Environment was established at Marymount Manhattan College through the generosity of Richard S. Berry and Lucy A. Commoner. These gifts have also created The Commoner Fund for Environmental Studies at the College. Barry Commoner was a prominent environmental scientist, widely known as a writer and lecturer on the relationship between environmental and energy problems and public policy.

The Closing Circle by Barry Commoner In his 1971 best-selling book, The Closing Circle, Dr. Commoner suggested that the US economy should be restructured to conform to the unbending laws of ecology. This book was one of the first to bring the concept of sustainability to a mass audience. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, The Closing Circle will be reissued and republished by Dover Press in February 2020. 

Learn more about the Barry Commoner Lecture on the Environment here