John Rolfe Robertson

University of Maryland College Park

About Me

I am student a student and teacher of language. I love to think and talk about how the language we use shapes our lives, and how the world shapes language. I studied Chinese in college, and that experience inspired me to move to southwest China. I lived in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province and home to pandas and spicy food, for seven years. These days, I spend my time investigating how people think and communicate about global issues that have large-scale impacts. I love to backpack, walking around and sleeping among trees and mountains.

Focus of current FEW-Nexus-based education work

Food-Water-Energy nexus issues have local, regional, as well as global impacts. So while NC-FEW is a national collaborative, one perspective I hope to engage with members is an international/global one. Some of the most intractable FEW-Nexus problems are those that occur across cultural, political, and linguistic boundaries. This is captured in the fact that many of the "Challenges in FEW-Nexus-based education" speak directly to global dynamics (e.g., lack of consensus, diversity of stakeholders, limited opportunity for collaboration). Of course NC-FEW and its members acknowledge these ideas; the visioning document explicitly states the need for education that is grounded in "real-world sustainability challenges involving stakeholders at local to global scales". Given my international experience and work in Global Citizenship Education, enhancing the degree to which issues are considered and stakeholders engaged globally is an objective that I eagerly pursue.