Joel Rader, COE Fellow

Bio

COE Fellowship Project

Joel Rader is a filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. He is currently a Film and Environmental Studies major at Wesleyan University (Class of '23) where he has served as a Film Department research and course assistant. He has worked as a grip and production assistant on music video and film productions in Brooklyn and has also been assistant director on Senior Thesis film projects at Wesleyan. Joel directed a short documentary, man with a broom, which was selected by numerous festivals, including the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and the Atlanta Shortsfest. This film also won Best Documentary Short at IndieX Film Fest 2021 in Los Angeles. As a Wesleyan College of the Environment Fellow, Joel is currently working on a documentary about climate change resilience in Culebra, Puerto Rico.

In June/July of 2021, with the support of a 2021 COE Research Fellowship and his Faculty Mentor, Professor Sadia Quraeshi Shepard, College of Film and the Moving Image, Joel began the first phase of a research project about local community response to climate change impacts in Culebra, Puerto Rico. In partnership with Sociedad Ambiente Marino (SAM) ( https://sampr.org/ ) , local business leaders and activists, Joel’s research investigates how resilience has been "seeded" within the island’s social-ecological system, in the wake of hurricanes Irma and Maria’s devastation of the island. Small island communities such as Culebra have been hardest hit by climate change, but have essentially no role in its onset. Joel’s research aims to identify, and raise awareness about, key elements of effective community response to the social-ecological impacts of climate change. Local rebuilding and restoration initiatives, including S.A.M.’s extensive coral restoration project on Culebra which is a primary focus of the project, help preserve both community and biodiversity. Through close observation and interviews with marine biologists and S.A.M. marine biology researchers, Joel’s research focuses on the lived experiences and concrete actions of individuals and small organizations that help lead to resilience in social-ecological systems. Joel also served in Summer 2022 as a video production intern for SAM and created a SAM promo reel.

Photo credits: Joel Rader and Juan Sanchez