Dr J.E. Telesca (Jennifer)

Jennifer E. Telesca is Associate Professor of Environmental Governance in the Department of Geography, Planning, and Environment at the Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University, the Netherlands. Her work takes a critical approach to ocean studies, spanning the interests of environmental diplomacy, ethnographies of international law in society, the human–animal relationship, political economy, the politics of extinction, and science and technology in policymaking. She conducts fieldwork at the United Nations and in treaty bodies, diplomatic missions, and other supranational sites.

Red Gold: The Managed Extinction of the Giant Bluefin Tuna (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) is Telesca’s first single-authored book. Its on-the-ground, first-person research shows just how damned the lives of fishes are in the very world entrusted to care for them in ocean governance. Her second book invites readers to honour sea creatures in all their mysterious and seemingly impossible forms, which she deems a precondition for marine conservation to ever achieve its purpose.

Telesca is trained to cross disciplines. By meandering past the silos in academic fields, she incites fresh thinking through unexpected scholarly alliance. This mode of engagement was honed in her pursuit of a PhD in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University, where she earned a Distinguished Dissertation Award. She also holds double MAs, one in Law and Society from New York University and the other in Anthropology from the University of Connecticut—Storrs. At the latter, she earned a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies. Prior to joining Radboud, she was Associate Professor in the Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies at the Pratt Institute, New York, where she worked with artists and architects to realise justice through sustainable design.