At home with the waste scholar

Waste studies is a new field. While scholars have made high-impact contributions for three decades, we are still missing a systematic overview of this literature. Our intention with this handbook has been to show the exciting possibilities waste studies offers in a structured way without imposing a canon. That said, there is much to gain from the authors of foundational texts, and we thought the best way to take stock was to interview three such scholars. We were interested in the following questions: How does one become a waste studies scholar? What are the tensions waste scholars have to work with? What theories and methodologies have been helpful or less so? What do they see as new directions in the field? We discussed these topics with an anthropologist, Catherine Alexander; a geographer, Nicky Gregson; and a historian, Gabrielle Hecht, and compiled their words of wisdom into a chapter that we hope will demonstrate the richness of waste studies and will guide newcomers to the field. Let us introduce them alphabetically.