Blue Lab

Housed in Princeton's High Meadows Environmental Institute and led by Allison Carruth and Barron Bixler, Blue Lab is the country's only media production studio located at an R1 university that focuses on climate and environment storytelling. Since 2021, Blue Lab has built a large multidisciplinary team, fostered a network of collaborators and advisors, launched a major public art program and developed five original story projects (three podcasts, a documentary film currently in production and a nonfiction dispatch series about uncanny coastal places). We're equipping scientists and humanists alike with the training and tools to amplify the reach of their vital work beyond academic journals, conferences, monographs and classrooms. To date, our published projects have garnered audiences upwards of 7,000 people. We see our innovation as an environmental humanities lab whose pedagogical impact can be scaled up through partnerships at and beyond Princeton. Our method is to mobilize environmental research in the service of telling stories that are hyperlocal, aesthetically captivating and geared toward connecting with audiences across some critical cultural divides. Over the next decade, we aim to seed a new generation of scholar-storytellers who can help close the gap between research that addresses urgent problems and the lived experiences of communities grappling with on-the-ground environmental change.