Assistant Professor
Ann Keller’s research
has explored
the interface between ecology
and policy, the role of
expertise and adaptation in
chronic and infectious disease
prevention efforts, and
the role of scientists in environmental
policymaking.
“If there’s an umbrella
that unites all of my work,
it’s that I’m very interested
in the use of expertise in
public settings, and the status
that experts have in deciding
whether we should
do X or we should do Y,”
said Keller.
The subject of expert
status—specifically the
status of scientists in policymaking—
was the focus
of Keller’s dissertation for
her political science degree,
which she received from Berkeley in 2001.
From Berkeley, Keller went to a tenuretrack
position at the University of Colorado,
Boulder, where she split her time
between the political science department
and environmental studies program.
At Colorado, Keller spent much of
her time teaching new courses. But she
also continued researching the role of
scientists in environmental policymaking,
which ultimately led to turning
her dissertation into a book manuscript
that’s currently under review at MIT
Press: Interested Scientists, Disinterested
Science: The Temptations of Influence on the
Science-policy Interface.
While conducting this research,
Keller said, “I had been thinking a lot
about the health side of environmental
policy. People think of acid rain and
climate change”—the policy areas her
manuscript focuses on—“as ecological
issues, but the transition to framing them
as health issues has been an interesting
one to study.”
Her interest in further training in
health policy led her to apply for the
Robert Wood Johnson Scholarship in
Health Policy Research. A year into her
position at Boulder, the scholarship came
through—and Boulder encouraged her
to take time off and accept the fellowship.
The scholarship brought her back
to Berkeley, one of the three campuses
through which the program is run.
While at Berkeley, a new position
opened up at the School of Public Health,
then in need of a faculty member who
could teach about the broader aspects
of health policy—such as governance,
policy decision making, and allocation
of health resources in the country— and
environmental health policy—focused,
for example, on tools for trying to limit
the negative impacts of industrialization
on health, be that pollution, workplace
exposures, or the construction of modern
cities.
Keller got the position, and has been
teaching courses offered by the school’s
Health Policy and Management and Environmental
Health Divisions. Her new
course, “Issues in Environmental Health,”
explores the history of environmental
health policy from early urban sanitation
efforts to the environmental statutes of
the 1970s. The course examines issues of
equity, justice, and, of course, expertise in
environmental policymaking.
“I try to give students a flavor of the
learning curve that the EPA and other regulatory
agencies deal with in actually trying
to make the air or the water cleaner,”
said Keller.
This is, of course, a topic she’s deeply
familiar with. Keller’s book manuscript
draws from the examples of acid rain and
climate change policy to show that while
scientists play a large part in framing issues
and setting agendas, that role erodes
over time, with policymakers taking over
as issues get translated into statutes and
rules.
Keller describes scientists as “messengers
from the natural world to the policy
world,” and asserts that their role in policymaking,
while not fixed, is critical. “Scientists
don’t control the issues from start
to finish in the policy process,” she said. “But that engine, of injecting new ideas
and getting the public to pay attention to
new ideas, is a very important one.”
