Stuart Kirsch
Not pictured by request. Photo: Annette Hornischer

Roy A. Rappaport Collegiate Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan

Mercedes-Benz Fellow - Class of Fall 2023

Stuart Kirsch is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He earned a BA from George Washington University and PhD in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. Kirsch has held visiting appointments at the University of Cambridge, Goldsmiths (University of London), University of Notre Dame, and Yale University. He is the author of Engaged Anthropology: Politics beyond the Text (California, 2018); Mining Capitalism: The Relationship between Corporations and their Critics (California, 2014); and Reverse Anthropology: Indigenous Analysis of Social and Environmental Relations in New Guinea (Stanford, 2006). Kirsch has long been engaged in advocacy work with people living downstream from the Ok Tedi copper-and-gold mine in Papua New Guinea, and with political refugees from West Papua, Indonesia. He has consulted for the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in the Marshall Islands; on conservation in Papua New Guinea; on indigenous land rights in Guyana, the Solomon Islands, and Suriname; and with an engineering firm that designs machinery for the mining industry. Kirsch is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and Wenner-Gren Foundation, among others.

Project Description

Counting Carbon

In his Academy project, Kirsch will investigate recent advances in carbon accounting. While scientists have been monitoring, measuring, and assigning responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions for several decades, this task has assumed new urgency in limiting global climate change. In “Counting Carbon,” Kirsch uses ethnographic methods and draws on insights from science studies to analyze the assumptions, practices, and emerging standards for tracking and measuring greenhouse gas emissions. “These assessments are essential to efforts to decarbonize the economy and limit global warming,” he writes. Part of a multi-year project on the global transition to a post-carbon economy supported by the Switzerland-based NOMIS Foundation—which promotes collaborative, high-risk research and strategic partnerships across disciplines—Kirsch’s work examines how climate change can be addressed by a range of social and technological shifts. In Berlin, he plans to divide his time among the climate science and policy institute Climate Analytics, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and consulting companies that offer training courses and carbon accounting services to private- and public-sector clients.

Academy Activities

04 Dec 23
Counting Carbon Environment

Mercedes-Benz Lecture

Counting Carbon

Stuart Kirsch examines the assumptions, practices, and standards of the emerging field of carbon accounting.

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05 Dec 23

Fellow Spotlight: Stuart Kirsch

Stuart Kirsch is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. In his Academy project, “Counting Carbon,” Kirsch uses ethnographic methods and draws on insights from science studies to analyze the assumptions, practices, and emerging standards for tracking and measuring greenhouse gas ...

Read more
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