ABSTRACT
In this interview conducted by Agnes Szokolszky in 1997 William M. Mace, a central figure in organizing the International Society for ecological Psychology and founding and editing the journal Ecological Psychology recalls his Ph.D. years in Minnesota in the late 1960s when it was a Chomskyan center and Robert Shaw was teaching there. William Mace recounts how he became Shaw's graduate student and got acquainted with Gibson's views through him. He shares impressions based on personal contact with James and Eleanor Gibson. He invokes the atmosphere of some milestone events, for example, the Penn State Conference in 1972, which was held in the atmosphere of the cognitive revolution but was the scene for the promotion of ecological psychology as well. Dr. Mace tells the history of the development of the ecological group and the movement at the University of Connecticut from the point of view of someone who was an active contributor to those events. In his current reflection in 2022, he looks back at his role as a facilitator and acknowledges the global extension of the Society and the achievements of ecological psychology in the past decades. The chapter also contains a short biography and a list of his ten most important publications.
