Leadership - Center for Culture, History, and Environment

Anna Andrzejewski, Director

Anna Andrzejewski is the director of CHE. She is also a professor in the Department of Art History, where she teaches courses on the history of North American vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes. Anna is also an affiliate of the Department of Geography and the Program in Urban and Regional Planning, and she co-directs the buildings-landscapes-cultures PhD program (a collaboration with UW-Milwaukee).

Anna has published Building Power: Architecture and Surveillance in Victorian America (Tennessee, 2008) as well as many articles on postwar suburban architecture. She is currently finishing a book on the post World War II building industry; working with graduate students in art history and geography on a multi-year research project on the cultural landscape of the northern Great Plains; and beginning a project on the cultural landscape of retirement in south Florida.

Rachel Gurney, Assistant Director

che@nelson.wisc.edu

Dr. Rachel M. Gurney is the assistant director of CHE. She is an environmental sociologist with a background in journalism, environmental science, and sociology. Her current research focuses on climate adaptation, socio-political dimensions of climate change, and food insecurity.

Rachel specializes in interdisciplinary research bridging social and natural sciences, teaching environmental sociology, and communicating research to the public. She has years of experience in the environmental field, including advocacy and outreach for national and international environmental organizations, teaching and research, and publishing and editing social science environmental research for a variety of audiences and publication platforms.