“Forests to Buildings: Portable Sawmills and the Local Production of Building Materials”

James Peters

Postdoctoral Fellow, Consortium for Faculty Diversity

Pitzer College, Claremont University Consortium

A Connecticut native, Mr. Peters completed his PhD in Forestry in the Building Materials and Wood Technology program at the Department of Environmental Conservation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  He is interested in housing industry-forest interaction, forest-based livelihoods, and the use of geographic analysis to identify communities of building practice in support of integrated forest conservation strategies.  His dissertation was titled, Materiality and location: a geographic study of log home manufacturing.  He just completed a teaching postdoctoral fellowship with Environmental Analysis Field Group at Pitzer College, Claremont University Consortium, Claremont, CA where he taught GIS Applications in Environmental Science and Place-based Environmental Analysis.

Mr. Peters’ professional activities have evolved from architectural practice to housing development and finance to consulting on the design and evaluation of electric and gas utility energy efficiency progams.  Mr. Peters undertook his PhD program after concluding that innovation in housing sustainability required integrated approaches, addressing forests, industrial ecology of builiding materials, and building culture.