Profile with Tamma Carleton
Tamma Carleton (Oregon & Magdalen 2011) is an Assistant Professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research and teaching focus on data-driven solutions to mitigating the global inequities of climate change and water scarcity. She has a PhD in Agricultural & Resource Economics from UC Berkeley, MSc’s in Environmental Change & Management and in Economics for Development from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Economics from Lewis & Clark College. She is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Links:
Rhodes Project: What’s currently on your playlist?
Tamma Carleton: I’m a huge podcast nerd! I have about five podcasts that I update weekly and listen to when I run. So it’s mostly podcasts and Raffi for my two year old.
Rhodes Project: If you could meet with any female figure, who would it be?
Tamma Carleton: I would love to meet Susan Athey, Professor of Economics at Stanford and the first woman to win the John Bates Clark medal, given to the most promising young American economist. Susan inspires me because she tackles dynamic real-world problems while simultaneously breaking boundaries in the basic science of economics. She is honest and transparent about the continued challenges of gender and diversity within our field, while continuing to break through glass ceilings in often unconventional ways.
Rhodes Project: What surprised you most about Oxford?
Tamma Carleton: I suppose I was most surprised by how integral the Rhodes community became to my intellectual and social experience. I knew that it would be a large part of my life, but I thought I was going to Oxford to learn from the faculty and colleagues in my department. I didn’t expect the diversity, dynamism and endless energy of other Scholars to be such a powerful source of growth and education for me.
Rhodes Project: When did you first become hooked on economics?
Tamma Carleton: Econ 101 in my freshman year of college. I went to a very small public high school and barely saw any economics before I went to college. I loved math, but after growing up in a household of artists, economics sounded excruciatingly boring. Then I had this absolutely phenomenal professor for my introductory economics course. He and I are still very close friends, and he completely changed the course of my life. I saw in his class how the quantitative methods and abstract math that I loved could be applied to the development and environment questions I really cared about. I was a quick convert.
Rhodes Project: If you could change one thing about how economics is broadly understood by the public, what would it be?
Tamma Carleton: At its core, economics is the study of human wellbeing. Our foundational tools are built to characterize how private and public decisions influence human opportunity and wellbeing, and yet we are often seen as unable or unwilling to address equity, social welfare, or the basic idea of happiness. I think this misconception leads to far more animus towards the discipline than is warranted.
Rhodes Project: What do you think is the priority for ensuring sustainable food production, particularly for developing countries, in the context of rapid environmental change?
Tamma Carleton: In the politics of climate change, the focus has been strongly on mitigation, because we’ve still dramatically failed to lower greenhouse gas emissions globally. But resources and attention have, until recently, largely ignored the challenge of climate change adaptation, perhaps because we feared it would draw resources away from mitigation efforts. Food systems, especially those in the developing world, are already facing the consequences of climate change in the form of increased severity and frequency of drought and flood events, with gradually rising temperatures further decreasing yield in many regions. Adaptation is an incredibly pressing priority, and I think a more balanced treatment of both mitigation and adaptation with respect to our food systems and climate change will be very important going forward.
Rhodes Project: What would an ideal day look like?
Tamma Carleton: An early breakfast with my 2 year old son, Atlas, followed by a trail run with my husband Scott and some close friends. I would teach one lecture on climate change economics and data science, make a big conceptual breakthrough on my own research, and end the day with a family jump in the ocean and a home-cooked meal.
Rhodes Project: What advice would you give to women hoping to enter the field of economics?
Tamma Carleton: Invest in building your own confidence and assertiveness. Economics is a male-dominated field with an atmosphere of rapid public debate and competition. While I think there’s important work to be done to fix many aspects of this atmosphere, that is not the job for women just entering the field. Learning to trust yourself and your ideas will help you thrive in the field as it is today and in whatever form it takes tomorrow. Also, don’t go it alone -- find a mentor who will invest in your success!
Rhodes Project: Where do you see yourself in ten years’ time?
Tamma Carleton: I love being a professor. I hope that in ten years I’m better at the many facets of this job than I am today, but I also hope that I’m still here, working with the brilliant scholars around me to tackle big and difficult scientific challenges.
Rhodes Project: What brings you the most joy?
Tamma Carleton: Solving difficult problems, high-fiving my toddler, and trail running with my husband.
Back to Scholar Profiles A-E
© 2023