We encourage prospective and current students to contact CHE affiliates to learn about their research, find out about CHE, and build connections.

Peter Allen

My current research is focused on the post-WWII transition from a rail-based to highway-based transportation infrastructure system, and the effects of this transition on patterns of energy-use, land-use, and social dynamics. I am also interested in exploring resilience in social and ecological systems, and the trade-offs inherent in re-organizing systems for increased resilience. The key departments and programs with which I’m affiliated are the Nelson Institute, SAGE, and Sandbox (a weekly luncheon dedicated to discussing complex systems). contact

Mitch Aso

I am a graduate student in the History of Science currently working on a dissertation entitled "Colonial Ecologies: Environment, Health, and Politics in French Indochina, 1890-1940", which focuses on environmental change and human health on the rubber plantations of southern Vietnam. My interest in environmental history began as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, where I majored in environmental engineering. Taking a course in environmental history turned me on to the idea that one could approach environmental topics from a humanistic perspective and, after a sojourn in Southeast Asia, I decided to come to Madison to further pursue those interests. contact

Meridith Beck Sayre

I grew-up on the shores of Deep Cove in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I completed a BA in Archaeology and an MA in History at Simon Fraser University. Over the course of my education at SFU, I worked in the archaeobotany lab identifying plant remains from archaeological sites in BC and Ecuador. This research led to my interest in environmental change over time and the relationships between people and plants in the past. I am currently a graduate student in the History of Science department researching Jesuit natural history in seventeenth century New France. contact

Sarah Besky

I am a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology. My dissertation research is on Fair Trade, Organic, and Biodynamic Tea Production in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal, India. I am interested in changing agricultural practices and how the adoption of fair trade organic production has effected workers’ perceptions of their health, labor, and environment. My research interests, broadly defined are: nature and capitalism; social and environmental justice in agriculture; and plantations and empire. I have benefited from interdisciplinary work in the departments of Rural Sociology and Geography. I also work closely with the Center for South Asia and the Center for East Asian Studies. website | contact

Peter Boger

I'm a Ph.D. student in the Nelson Institute's Environment and Resources program. My broad research interests include environmental history, environmental film, environmental education, and animal studies. My dissertation research will try to focus on the impacts of film on people's perceptions of animals and on support for and practice of wildlife conservation. I recently completed my M.S. in Environment and Resources, which focused on teaching environmental education in a cross-cultural context at a summer camp in Siberia. I'm from both New Jersey and North Carolina, but don't ask me to pick which one is really home! contact

Brad Brewster

I'm working on a Ph.D. in Environment and Resources with Minors in Sociology and Philosophy. My dissertation is focused on time and environment. It grew out of wondering what roles, facilitative or prohibitive, different time scales – from scientific conceptions of “deep [geologic] time” to individual experiences of "shallow [subjective] time" – play (or not) in individuals' environmental concerns, as these implicate future time (e.g., concern for future generations, goals requiring the cooperation of future generations for their fulfillment, values based upon long-term foresight). I have a strong background in sociology and social psychology. I grew up in the Kansas City, Missouri area. contact

Caroline Brock

I am a doctoral student in Environment and Resources focusing on sustainable agriculture and food systems issues. I do research with Program on Agricultural Technology Studies (PATS) which is an institute run jointly by Agricultural and Applied Economics and Rural Sociology. More specifically, I am studying adoption decisions and associated satisfaction levels with organic dairy and intensive rotational grazing based on social, spiritual, ecological and economic factors. I have been a leader in F.H. King Students of Sustainable Agriculture for a number of years. Most recently, I am serving on the board for Churches Center for Land and People. contact

Sarah Camacho

I am a graduate student in history specializing in the urban environmental history of the twentieth century American west. I enjoy learning about people's ideas for urban landscapes, and the messy ways in which those ideas are implemented through political and cultural processes. I recently finished my master's thesis on an expressway revolt in San Antonio, Texas. Before coming to Madison, I worked for two years as an archivist, specializing in oral history and digitization. I have lived in eight states and visited forty-eight. I am originally from the north side of Chicago. contact

Andrew Case

I am a PhD student in the History Department at UW-Madison. I became interested in environmental history while an undergrad at the University of New Hampshire where I studied history and geology. Since that time my research has ranged from North Atlantic cod populations, to interstate highways, to an MA thesis on political conflicts over water fluoridation in the United States. I am beginning a dissertation on J.I. Rodale and the organic food movement. I am particularly interested in ideas about food, agriculture, and health in the twentieth century and their influence on environmental politics and culture. contact

Chelsea Chapman

I am a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology with research interests in youth citizenship and activism, political economies of hip-hop, and the politics of landscape and industry in Alaska and the circumpolar North. My doctoral research will build on coursework in anthropology, American Indian studies, geography, and musicology to explore political subjectivities shared by members of activist networks as they address the crisis landscapes of Alaskan climate change and rapacious resource extraction. I grew up in Alaska and earned a bachelor's degree in Anthropology from Reed College. Before coming to Madison, I spent several years as coordinator of the Edible Schoolyard, a sustainable agriculture education project in California. contact

Jennifer Conrad

I have a long-standing interest not only in human-environment interactions but also in human-animal and animal-environment interchanges. My research interests include 20th and 21st-century poetry and theory, including the ethics of representation, developing notions of the post-human, and depictions of animal others in theory, literature, and art. Contemporary poetry, in particular, seems to offer ways to explore and articulate these junctures. I also write poetry: my first collection of poems, A Cartography of Birds, was published in 2002 by Louisiana State University Press. I'm currently a graduate student in the English Department working toward a PhD in Literary Studies. contact

Liese Dart

I grew up in Warrenton, Virginia, a small town about 50 miles west of Washington D.C. at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Prior to starting graduate school I lived and worked in Virginia and Washington D.C. for the Piedmont Environmental Council, focusing on energy policy. I am currently a master’s student in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies in the Environment & Resources program. My interests include energy conservation and efficiency programs, U.S. environmental history, environmental filmmaking, contemporary art and politics. contact

Andy Davey

I am a masters student in Geography, with a background in philosophy and non-profit work. My research interests revolve around what I see as a sustainable revolution on the verge or in the process of happening, and more specifically changes that are happening in agriculture and food consumption. I'm interested in how we arrived at our current food system, and how movements, policies, individuals, groups are functioning to change (or preserve) that system primarily here in the US. Other programs I hope to work with are the Nelson Institute, Community & Environmental Sociology, Agroecology, and the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems. contact

Kara Dempsey

I am a dissertator in the Geography department currently studying the role of politics and history in relation to individual perception(s) of changes on the local landscape. In my particular case study, changes on the physical landscape have been linked to politicized claims to possess the ability to create a landscape that is "truly" representative of the culture, identity, and history of the local community. Such inflammatory statements and calculated modifications on the land have, in turn, sparked contestation within the community; predominantly pertaining to issues of land use, cultural identity, and struggles relating to representation on the local landscape. contact

Mike Dockry

I was born and raised in Green Bay, WI and am a registered member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. I have a BS in Forestry with a Certificate in Environmental Studies from UW-Madison and an MS in Forest Resources from Penn State. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bolivia and worked in both the Andean mountains and the Amazonian tropics. I was the Assistant Forest Planner for the Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forests. Currently I am the Forest Service Liaison to College of Menominee Nation in Keshena, WI. I am a graduate student with Nancy Langston in the Forest Ecology and Management Department. My research interests focus on indigenous people in North, Central, and South America.
website | contact

Richard Donohue

I was born and raised in the Southwestern US where the Colorado Plateau meets the San Juan Mountains. After studying philosophy and political science as an undergraduate, I completed a MA in Education at CU-Boulder and worked as an ethnographic researcher with an independent group of sociologists. I am now a geographer and cartographer, pursuing a Ph.D. minor in Science and Technology Studies with the Holtz Center. I weave my interests around issues related to energy, networked information and communication, invention and innovation, and visualization practices to investigate the historical and political implications of science and technology. contact

Todd Dresser

My primary area of interest is U.S. environmental/agricultural history. My dissertation focuses on the early twentieth century and looks at the ways in which actors within grassroots and governmental organizations concerned with the many problems of “country life” come to think of themselves as concerned with “the family farm.” I am interested in the ways in which rural reformers, who come from many walks of life, situate the “family farm” at the nexus of social and environmental sustainability and craft an environmental identity for “the family farmer” which can be used by farmers and others to alternatively accommodate and resist industrial agriculture. In my research, I draw on insights from environmental, cultural, and religious history. contact

Ari Eisenberg

I am a student in the Department of History, studying the twentieth century urban environment. I am especially interested in the ways that socially marginal people—including the homeless, queer people and people engaging in queer activities—have historically occupied public and semi-public space in the urban United States. My work addresses how these people’s access to such spaces changed with the rise and fall of industry, the growth of urban parks and natural spaces, and increasing municipal regulation and surveillance. I obtained my BA from Barnard College in 2004, and my MA from UW in 2008 (Thesis Title: "Life on the Margins: The Contested Space of Greenwich Village's Hudson River Waterfront, 1890-2001). I am also a member of UW's Program in Gender and Women's History. contact

Genya Erling

I am interested in the changing patterns of human landscapes, primarily as regards agriculture, food systems, and land use, over time. With the flexibility of the Land Resources, I have been able to stitch together coursework in Botany, Landscape Architecture, Geography, and Rural Sociology, giving me a broad perspective on environmental issues. My dissertation work focuses on the environmental history of the urban gardens of Germany. I am involved with the Slow Food organization in Madison and in its sister city, Freiburg, Germany, as well as with the REAP food group, the Dane County Farmers Market, and various other local food efforts. contact

Jake Fleming

Jake Fleming is a 2nd year graduate student in the Geography Department; he also works closely with the Center for Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia (CREECA). After receiving a B.A. in Biology from Harvard, he spent 2 years in Kyrgyzstan, first as a Peace Corps volunteer with a community-based ecotourism NGO, and later working with a biologist on apples in home gardens. Jake returned to Kyrgyzstan in 2007 to study the effects of post-Soviet decollectivization on land use among semi-nomadic herders on the shores of Lake Song Kol. His interests include post-socialist transition, nomads, Central Asian languages, and ethnoagriculture. contact

Jesse Gant

Jesse Gant is a graduate student in the history department. His interests center on the diverse meanings of "homeland" for regimes and peoples around the world. His current research focuses on the intersections of race, gender, and regional identity in the 19th century American Midwest. He is also developing a project on the early history of the bicycling industry. Before coming to Madison, he wrote an MA thesis at New York University on Underground Railroad commemorations in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Cincinnati. He hopes to expand this work into a dissertation that further elaborates on themes of race, the landscapes of collective memory, and the stories told about America’s heartland. contact

Kevin Gibbons

My intellectual and professional interests in international development and the complex dynamics between rural communities and their environment were piqued during my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines. I have built my graduate work on a desire to serve these communities by helping to understand what leads to effective governance of natural resources and by developing compelling narratives that relate the lived experience. I am currently researching how Ugandan villages around Lake Victoria manage their fisheries and interact with the Government of Uganda, various aid NGOs, the international fish trade, and other entities that affect the lake and the people who depend on it. contact

Jacquelyn Gill

Jacquelyn holds a BA in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic, and is currently a PhD student in Geography, minoring in Ecology. She is interested in using interdisciplinary approaches to studying the relationship between humans and the natural world over broad time scales, using paleoecological tools to investigate past landscapes. Her graduate research is focused on the causes and ecological impacts of the North American megafauna extinction, and she is also interested in Native American land use and the environmental causes of civilizational collapse. An affiliate of the Climate, People & the Environment Program, she also serves on the graduate committee of the Madison Ecology Group. contact

Todd Goddard

I'm a Ph.D. student in the English Department. My research interests include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literature, ecocriticism, and environmental history. My dissertation focuses on the important role of land speculation in early-American life from the Revolution through the Panic of 1837. It examines the many ways that land speculation functioned as a fundamental, driving force for American westward expansion and how it helped to shape our present-day relationships with the environment. It also considers the Panic of 1837 as a cultural touchstone of the nineteenth century, and it explores its influence on literature, art, politics, business, and American thought. contact

Maya Golden-Krasner

I am a Ph.D. student in history. Before coming to graduate school, I practiced environmental law. My research interests center on the histories of law, public health, and environmental health. My dissertation, under the direction of Judith Leavitt, examines the political and legal battles over water fluoridation as a way to understand the interrelationships between cultural conceptions of "health" and "nature," and health care policy, at various levels of government. contact

Rachel Gross

I am a graduate student in the Department of History interested in the American West, US environmental history, and Women and Gender. My research interests include mountain hut systems for hikers. I explore the actions as well as the philosophies that guide mountain hut visitors, up-keepers, and locals inhabitants as a window into the larger question of how each group develops its own sense of what wilderness is and how to experience it. I am interested in the physical structure of huts and the way national conceptions of wilderness affect the design, location, and logistics of hut systems. contact

Micah Hahn

I am a joint PhD candidate in Environment and Resources and Population Health Sciences. My background is in public health, and I study global environmental change and infectious disease epidemiology. Many of the disease patterns we see today are shaped by human's interaction with their environment. As we continue encroaching on previously untouched natural areas, we will likely come into contact with new diseases and disease vectors, which with increasing globalization and rapid global travel, can easily be spread to new populations. I am interested in understanding these patterns of emergence by studying ecosystem interaction and appreciating the degree to which humans can shape the environmental drivers of infectious disease. contact

Brian Hamilton

I am a Maine native who has arrived in the Midwest to pursue a Ph.D. in History. After receiving my B.A. in 2004 from Columbia, where I studied nineteenth-century U.S. political and literary culture, I taught high-school history for four years in suburban Boston. In my research, I am hunting down opportunities to unveil the environmental context of iconic moments in the narrative of U.S. history, with a particular interest in the Reconstruction South. Collaborating with ecologists, I co-author a blog on conservation, http://consblog.org. contact

Summer Harrison

I grew up in Texas where my grandfather has a ranch, and I always spent a lot of time outside. My early interests in human relationships with space continued in college where I wrote a thesis on the carnivalesque space of raves. With English as my home department I’ve spent most of my time here researching the intersections of gender, race, and narrative with space/place. I’m especially interested in Native American environmental literature, literary representations of postmodern space, and metafiction. contact

Chandra Hinton

I am a doctoral student in the joint PhD program in Sociology and Rural Sociology. I am interested in inequality and stratification, with strong interests in the politics of food (both producers and consumers) and hunger, as well as environmental justice. My current research projects center on agricultural producers. One project concerns farm entry and access to land—in particular, interrogating which traditional and nontraditional forms of land tenure can better assist beginning farmers. The other focuses on Growing Power, the urban agriculture center in Milwaukee. The key departments I have worked with are Sociology, Rural Sociology, and Horticulture. contact

Ray Hsu

I live in Madison and Toronto. I am interested in how such sites as disaster zones allow us to confront scales beyond, below, or other than the U.S. nation-state. My other teaching and research interests include American studies, creative writing, cultural theory, public humanities, and twentieth century American literature. I am completing my literary studies dissertation, "Knowledge Economies: Funding Structures and Literary Ethnography in the United States, 1935-1943," in the Department of English.
website | contact

<-->
Po-Yi Hung

I am a doctoral student in the geography department. My dissertation aims to understand the relationships between globalization, place-making and landscape transformation in Shangri-la County, Yunnan Province, China. By looking into the processes of reproducing and repackaging landscapes, I intend to see how modern consumption and protection concerning the magnificent landscapes of nature and culture signify a contingent mixture of socialist modernity and globalization which have collided with histories of the Chinese imperialism and the Western colonialism. This historical sedimentation in landscapes has not only actively turned the fiction of Shangri-la into a modern fact, but puts the place-making of Northwest Yunnan in an ongoing fluidity. contact

Tori Jennings

Since 1998, I have been conducting research with farmers and ranchers on a variety of human/environmental issues including water rights in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado (BA); adaptation to climate variability in the American Northern Great Plains (MA); and currently, a critical examination of the sociocultural and political dimensions of climate and climate change (Ph.D.). By incorporating the insights of anthropology, geography, environmental history, my dissertation project provides a nuanced historical analysis of the inter-relations between cultural constructions of climate, class, and social values. I seek to understand and explain ‘climate narratives’ as a subset of cultural meaning. contact

Stephen Laubach

I am a second year Ph.D. candidate in the Curriculum and Instruction Department's Science Education Program. My dissertation research centers on the history of ecology teaching in American high schools between 1900 and 1980. Following 18 months in Costa Rica as a community volunteer and later as a teaching assistant for a tropical ecology course, I received a master's degree in Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development in 2000 from the UW-Madison. Most recently I taught high school biology at Aldo Leopold's alma mater, The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, where I continued to develop a strong interest in field and classroom teaching of ecology. contact

Brian Leech

I am a dissertator in the department of history who studies ethnicity, the American West, labor, and environmental history. I have long been particularly interested in the social and environmental history of mining communities. My dissertation continues this interest by exploring neighborhood life in the copper mining city of Butte, Montana. It discusses Butte’s ethnic neighborhoods, many of which an expanding open-pit copper mine devoured, as well as how the change from underground to above-ground mining affected the town’s workforce, city- planning and experience with environmental hazards. contact

Chris Limburg

I am a geographer researching naga nature spirits in the Himalaya. I am especially concerned with how naga practice and belief shapes human relationships with the environment. Primarily, I use conversations about place, agency, and nature to do this work. My aim is to bring more depth and breadth to contemporary understandings of our world. website | contact
Andrew Mahlstedt

Having grown up in Latin America, studied in China, and taught in India for the last four years, I have lived amongst the changing relationships between humans and the environment across the third world. I am pursuing a PhD in English to shape an academic lens, to bring into focus the lens of experiences that have revealed the direct impacts of globalization, international development, and historical regimes of disparate power relations still present especially in the postcolonial world. It is this confluence that I will explore in my dissertation: how these forces, both historical and contemporary, have shaped and been shaped by environments locally and, increasingly, globally. Currently, I am interested in narratives of landlessness and "natural exile" in the developing world that are precipitated by "international development" specifically and globalization generally. contact

Adam Mandelman

My master's thesis - "Walking Through Time and Place: The Cultural Politics of Hawai'i's Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail" - examined problems of historical and cultural representation around a set of ancient foot trails on Hawai'i's Big Island. I am currently looking to expand this project into a dissertation about the negotiations between history and memory that take place along tourist routes and journeys. My broad academic interests include: cultural and historical geography, environmental history, roads and trails, memory, tourism, the American West, Hawai'i, the Mississippi River. contact

Casey Meehan

My research is in place-based education. I am particularly interested in how schools address one's sense of place and the implications this has on the type of citizens our schools cultivate. The department I associate most closely with is Curriculum and Instruction in the school of Education; however, given the interdisciplinary nature of place-based education I take courses in a diverse array of humanities and the social sciences. contact

Nate Millington

I am a Masters student in the geography department, and received a B.A. in history from the University of Virginia. I am interested in imaginative geographies, historic preservation, and the experience of urban places. My current research is on the city of Detroit, MI, where I study visual representations of the city as decaying and receding into nature. I am particularly interested in tracing out the political dimensions of representation and nostalgia as it pertains to urban redevelopment and tourism. contact

Nic Mink

From an early age, I knew that my career path would somehow be related to food. Perhaps I would be a chef or a restaurateur, I thought. But spending years of my life behind a flame failed to satisfy my intellectual passions. As a compromise, I now study the history, sociology, and economics of food production and consumption. Working at the intersection of cultural, environmental, labor and economic history, my dissertation in the history department explores the catching, transporting, marketing, cooking, serving and consuming of the stone crab during the twentieth century. Prized first as a regional delicacy sustained by the tourist economy in Florida, the stone crab is now flown to culinary destinations throughout the United States where wealthy gourmands dine on the crustacean. contact

Alex Nading

I am a PhD. Candidate in the Department of Anthropology, though I have been fortunate to get acquainted with Anthropology’s academic kin in Geography and Medical History and Bioethics. My interests are in urban landscapes, ecological health, and the effects of “free market” reforms on the lives of urban Latin Americans. For my dissertation, I am researching the intertwined problems of waste management and public health in urban Nicaragua. From late 2007 to early 2009, I will be in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, carrying out ethnographic research on the emergence of dengue fever in both public health policy and the local garbage economy. contact

Jonathan Munetz

I am first-year student in the Geography Department. After completing a B.A. in History at Carleton College, I taught English in rural Japan and later worked on renewable energy technologies for the U.S. Department of Energy. These experiences have helped inform my broad interests around the reciprocal relationship between people and resources and in environmental history. I am specifically interested in the natural and cultural history of food and food systems and in the flow of ideas and practices surrounding them between cultures. I also hope to explore the consumption of food as a marker of identity and as an aesthetic exercise. contact

Abby Neely

I am a PhD student in the Geography Department conducting dissertation research in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. My research combines oral, ethnographic, survey, and archival methods in an effort to understand the reasons for small-scale environmental change in two communities from 1940 to the present. By focusing on gardening, herding, and healing as everyday practices of environmental management, I am exploring how changing ideas about and experiences with human health and violence have become inscribed in the landscape of rural KZN. contact

Michelle Niemann

As a PhD student in the English department, I focus on twentieth-century American literature, particularly contemporary poetry. I am interested in how poets define their work by comparing the poem to an organism, and in how the resulting concept of "organic form" in poetry might shed light on other conversations about organic food, organic farming, and societies or environments as organisms. I am also pursuing a minor in U.S. History, and I am involved in the English department's Contemporary Poetry Reading Group as well as CHE. I work as a teaching assistant for literature courses and as an instructor in the Writing Center. contact

Abigail Popp

I am a graduate student in the department of Geography as well as a fellow in the CHANGE (Certificate on Humans and the Global Environment) program. I am interested in the dynamics of socio-ecological systems in the context of water management in arid regions. I’m curious about the ways in which socio-cultural processes mediate environmental management decisions and how western “scientific” ecological understanding can be blended with a political ecology approach to assess vulnerability and resilience of socio-ecological systems. contact

Megan Raby

I am a graduate student in the History of Science department and a CHANGE (Certificate on Humans and the Global Environment) fellow. My research interests center on the role of place in shaping scientific knowledge as well as the intersection between history of science and environmental history. Broadly speaking, I am concerned with the movement of scientific knowledge and practices across physical and disciplinary space. I am particularly interested in fieldwork in the life sciences during the nineteenth- and early-twentieth centuries by Americans working in the American West, colonial possessions of the US, and areas of American economic influence abroad. contact

Kelly Roark

I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of History. My dissertation explores ideas of health and Southwestern landscapes from the 1850s to the 1940s. It rests at the intersection of environmental history, history of science and medicine, and U.S. Western history and draws upon theories of the body, medicine, and science in colonial settings. It foregrounds the discourses of health Anglo migrants used to understand the landscapes they encountered and explores the ways in which perceptions of healthfulness informed the remaking of regional identity, ethnic and racial identity, and social structures in the Southwest. contact

Chelsea Schelly

I am in my first year of the Ph.D. program in the Department of Sociology/Rural Sociology. My research interests are in the field of environmental sociology, specifically in the sociology of energy and renewable energy. My M.A. research focused on forms of participatory democracy and the best means of promoting renewable energy adoption within the Colorado utilities industry. For my dissertation, I hope to trace the electrical current through space and time, across political and geographic boundaries and to demonstrate the power dynamics and economic institutions that shape human-environment relations with regard to energy use. My interests are driven by a belief that how we power our lives indicates an essential element of our relationship to the natural world. contact

Jennifer Schmitz

My graduate research investigates how lakes have responded to 18th-20th century land use changes in northern Wisconsin. Using paleolimnological research and social historical research, I am studying past changes in lake environments and interpreting them in a context of changing land use decisions and social values. With these perspectives, I hope to reveal some of the historical relationships between social decisions and environmental processes that have helped shape the Northern Highlands region of Wisconsin. I am a PhD student in the Limnology & Marine Sciences program and my advisor is Sara Hotchkiss. website | contact

Emma Schroeder

I’m a first-year student in the Geography Department. I received a B.A. in biology from Swarthmore College. Since then I have worked with teachers in Boston to integrate urban ecology into their classrooms and as an ecology intern for the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank. I am fascinated by changing land use over time, conservation, crop biodiversity, and looking at how agricultural landscapes are shaped by both ecological and social processes. contact

Vincent M. Smith

I am a Ph.D. student in Land Resources at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. In general, my teaching and research explores the social and historical factors influencing landscape change. I am currently looking at the social, historical, and ecological influences on food systems as a way to inform efforts in sustainable agriculture and agroecology. Traditionally, my work blurs the distinction between natural and social sciences. I have a background in farming and plant ecology and a Masters Degree in environmental ethics and education. contact

Heather Swan

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Literary Studies with a focus in eco-criticism. I received my MFA in poetry from the UW in 2007, and wanted to further investigate the ways in which art and literature are responding to issues of environmental destruction, exile, and extinction. I am also interested in thinking about how creativity and innovation can be promoted in disciplines such as science or math. A collection of my poems called The Edge of Damage is forthcoming from Parallel Press. contact

Andrew Stuhl

I view socio-ecological systems through the intellectual lenses of environmental history and history of science, asking what human and natural histories offer to understanding and solving today's environmental problems. My research interests include North American natural and cultural resource management in the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of history in decision-making, leadership studies, and environmental education. My dissertation project will investigate the environmental and cultural history of resource extraction in the Canadian Arctic to comprehend changing land-use patterns, knowledge production, and cultural conflict in the region. This research will focus on encounters among Inuvialuit natives in the Beaufort-Delta region with non-native whalers, trappers, traders, and oil developers over the last two centuries. Ultimately, I hope gaining a richer historical context of the patterns of resource extraction will inform the paths of sustainable development, cultural preservation, and environmental management in the Arctic. contact

Jesse Oak Taylor

My interest in global environmental issues is to some degree inherited and the result of a childhood blessed with an abundance of nature, divided between rural West Virginia and the Himalayas. I initially thought that I would pursue a career in nature/ travel writing and wildlife photography before becoming interested in studying representation and aesthetics in an academic setting. Having written on topics ranging from the clouded leopard to environmentalism and hunting in the British Empire, Fair Trade coffee, and Sherlock Holmes, my current research focuses on aesthetic response to air pollution in late-Victorian Britain. contact

Travis Tennessen

My research interests include environmental and wilderness politics in the North American West, especially local narratives and understandings of environmental change. My current research is on the history and politics of introduced wildlife on the Kodiak Archipelago in Alaska. I have enjoyed teaching about the history of conservation in the U.S. in Geography 339 for the past several years, and help run an environmentally focused service-learning program called Quest that takes me to exotic locales like Costa Rica and North Dakota. This year I’m bouncing between Wisconsin, my fieldwork site in Alaska, and my new home in State College, PA, so catch me if you can! contact

Noah Theriault

My interests revolve around the intersection of political and environmental anthropology, with a geographic focus on the Philippines. Prior to enrolling at the UW, I spent nine months in Palawan province, the Philippines, studying a social movement composed of indigenous people, artisanal fishers, and NGO-affiliated activists. As a graduate student in cultural anthropology, I aim to examine the effects of state and NGO intervention on indigenous identity, environmental knowledge, and livelihood practices -- with an eye on how all of the above relate to environmental knowledge production and theories of environmental change. contact

Christine Vatovec

I am a PhD student in the Land Resources program of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. My research examines the environmental implications of American perceptions of death and dying as mediated through end-of-life healthcare and mortuary practices. contact

Ryan Walsh

I’m a poet in the MFA Creative Writing Program in the Department of English. My research interests include ecocriticism, 19th and 20th century American literature, contemporary poetry, geography, bioregionalism, environmental history, experiential education, and Appalachian studies. Since 2004, I have taught in the University of Michigan’s New England Literature Program (NELP), an experiential learning program that combines creative writing, literary studies, and environmental engagement. I also co-edit the place-based literary journal, Rivendell. contact

Kiersten Warning

Addressing interpersonal violence for 18 years in the United States led me to my current research interest in Northwest Yunnan Province, China (naturally!). I hope to learn about the root causes of IPV and alternate conflict resolution mechanisms by working with a matrilineal society in the foothills of the Himalayas. Anthropology graciously welcomed me into their PhD program. Pressing for Shangri-La are China’s current economic development initiatives that are changing its physical and cultural landscape. History, law, politics, gender, culture formation, ethnic identity, neuroscience, biodiversity, agricultural production, trade, religion, education, and health are in the research mix so far. contact

Hannah Nyala West

“At Sea in the World (or, The Unnatural Histories of a Ship): The Cruise of the U.S. Frigate Essex, 1798-1837” I aim to be an ethnographic maritime historian of the long eighteenth century. My work has been shaped and conditioned by the intellectual disciplines of sociocultural anthropology (esp. ethnography) and environmental and social history, as well as by long practice of deep immersion in other cultures, diverse ecosystems, and close interactions with our planet’s non-human inhabitants. My research is transoceanic in scope and focuses on questions of cultural memory, identity, violence and cooperation, power and pain, and contingency. contact

Amrys Williams

As a graduate student in the history of science, I seek to bring together the perspectives of environmental history and the history of science and technology through the study of agriculture. I am also interested in the history of science education, and urban and rural perspectives on scientific and technological issues. My master's research explored the ways in which 4-H clubs in Wisconsin drew on ideas of ecology to promote a holistic vision of rural revitalization during the Depression and the Second World War. My dissertation expands on this work to understand how the 4-H model of modernization and development -- of rural communities, landscapes, economies, and young people -- rose to prominence in the U.S. and abroad from the 1910s through the 1970s. contact

Louis Paolin Wu

I am Louis Paolin Wu, a PhD student in English Department. I am from Taiwan and very interested in environmental issues. As an English major student, I am especially interested in ecocriticism, environmental literature, environmental justice, how humans perceive/construct/imagine nature and how nature inscribes culture and people’s daily lives. For my doctoral work, I aim to further specialize in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literature and environmental criticism. I propose to explore the engagements of early American writers with the landscapes and the appropriations of the American wilderness for various interests. contact

Anna Zeide

I am a graduate student in the History of Science and Medical History departments, and my general area of research is at the intersection of these fields with environmental history. I am now beginning my dissertation work, which will focus on the history of canned food in early twentieth century America. Specifically, I am interested in how canned food helped to forge a national diet out of one that had previously been regional and seasonal, and also in how canners advertised their products to consumers as a way of escaping the confines of natural cycles, with the aid of science and technology. contact

John Zinda

I am a doctoral student in Community and Environmental Sociology. A decade of study and research in China has impressed me with the tough challenges many people face in working for good livelihoods, convivial environments, and fair exchanges--and even agreeing on what is good, livable, or fair. Currently, I am conducting research on protected areas in an area of northwest Yunnan province, most of whose residents are Tibetan. I am examining both the political context in which conservationists, entrepreneurs, and officials work out how conservation and tourism are managed, and how different management models play out in rural communities. website | contact

Peter Allen
Mitch Aso
Meridith Beck Sayre
Sarah Besky
Peter Boger
Brad Brewster
Caroline Brock
Sarah Camacho
Andrew Case
Chelsea Chapman
Jennifer Conrad
Liese Dart
Andy Davey
Kara Dempsey
Mike Dockry
Richard Donohue
Todd Dresser
Ari Eisenberg
Genya Erling
Jake Fleming
Jesse Gant
Kevin Gibbons
Jacquelyn Gill
Todd Goddard
Maya Golden-Krasner
Rachel Gross
Micah Hahn
Brian Hamilton
Summer Harrison
Chandra Hinton
Po-Yi Hung
Tori Jennings
Stephen Laubach
Brian Leech
Chris Limburg
Andrew Mahlstedt
Adam Mandelman
Casey Meehan
Nate Millington
Nic Mink
Jonathan Munetz
Alex Nading
Abby Neely
Michelle Niemann
Abby Popp
Megan Raby
Kelly Roark
Chelsea Schelly
Jennifer Schmitz
Emma Schroeder
Vincent M. Smith
Andrew Stuhl
Heather Swan
Jesse Oak Taylor
Travis Tennessen
Noah Theriault
Christine Vatovec
Ryan Walsh
Kiersten Warning
Hannah Nyala West
Amrys Williams
Louis Paolin Wu
Anna Zeide
John Zinda

---

CHE Alumni
Weina Chen
Rob Emmett
Sarah Mittlefehldt