Biography

Dr. Penelope Canan from the University of Denver joined the faculty of UCF Department of Sociology in Fall 2006. Canan recently served as the Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba Science City, Japan. She is the recipient of the Ozone Layer Protection Award of the US EPA (2000), the Distinguished Practice Award of the Pacific Sociological Association, the Durham Lectureship Award from Oklahoma State University (2006), and the Driscoll Master Teacher Award at the University of Denver. She and socio-legal scholar Nancy Reichman co-authored Ozone Connections: Expert Networks in Global Environmental Governance (Greenleaf 2002), published in Japanese by Nippon Hyoronsha in 2005. Canan served as lead author on the Technology and Economic Assessment Panel of the UNEP Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozon e Layer, chair of the Environment and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association, vice president of the Society for Applied Sociology, and director of the International Institute for Environment and Enterprise at DU. She will continue as a board member of the Colorado Energy Science Center and president of the board of the SLAPP Resource Center. The latter affiliation stems from her 20-year collaborative work on SLAPPs (“Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation”), that is, the use of civil lawsuits to silence political speech, as summarized in her book with law professor George Pring, entitled SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out (Temple University Press, 1996).