Affiliates

Joni Adamson is President’s Professor of Environmental Humanities at Arizona State University. She is the Secretary General of the Humanities for the Environment Network and Director of the North American Observatory. She is the author and/or co-editor of American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice and Ecocriticism (University of Arizona Press, 2001), The Environmental Justice Reader: (University of Arizona Press, 2002),m American Studies, Ecocriticism, and Ecology (Routledge, 2013), Keywords for Environmental Studies (New York University Press, 2016), Ecocriticism and Indigenous Studies—Conversations from Earth to Cosmos (Routledge 2017) and Humanities for the Environment (Routledge 2017). She lectures internationally and has published over 80 articles, chapters, blogs and reviews. Her work has been supported by many awards and grants, including most recently, the 2019 Benjamin N. Duke Fellowship at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. In 2012, she served as President of the world’s largest environmental humanities organization, The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE).

Steven Hartman is Visiting Professor in the Faculty of History and Philosophy at University of Iceland. He leads the Circumpolar Observatory group in the Humanities for the Environment (HfE) global observatory network and from 2021 is Executive Director of the BRIDGES Sustainability Science Coalition in UNESCO’s Management of Social Transformations Programme (MOST).

Hartman’s academic specialties are diverse, including literary reception studies, cultural and environmental history, literary translation, science communication, creative writing and integrated environmental humanities. His work addresses environmental memory, integration of the humanities in global change research, and collaboration among social and human scientists, artists, education specialists and civil society in efforts to meet sustainability challenges of the present and foreseeable future. Transdisciplinary approaches to convergent knowledge production–aimed at engaging diverse communities of interest, knowledge and practice, both within and outside academia–unify many of these projects. Also unifying this body of work is an underlying ambition to better understand and articulate how co-productive processes of learning, research and societal action, promoting responsible environmental change and wise practices of stewardship, both feed into and derive amplified strength from new communities of purpose, as agents of sustainable social-ecological transformation.

Steven Hartman has led/co-led numerous projects funded by the Swedish Research Council, The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences and NordForsk (the joint research foundation of the Nordic Council of Ministers). For more than a decade he coordinated the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES). Recent international projects led/co-led include Bifrost and the transdisciplinary research investigation Reflections of Change: The Natural World in Literary and Historical Sources from Iceland ca. AD 800 to 1800 (ICECHANGE). He currently participates in international projects funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Belmont Forum and the EEA and Norway fund. He is a member of the Scientific Steering committee of the Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) and serves as co-chair of the advisory board of the Human Ecodynamics Research Center (CUNY Graduate Center, City University of New York).

Gisela Heffes is Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at Rice University and Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University as well as a writer, ecocritic, and public intellectual with a particular focus on literature, media, and the environment in Latin America. Her most recent publications are the co-edited volumes The Latin American Ecocultural Reader (2020), Pushing Past the Human in Latin American Cinema (2021), Un gabinete del futuro (2022) and Turbar la quietud (2023); the authored monograph Visualizing Loss in Latin America: Biopolitics, Waste, and the Urban Environment (2023); the novels Ischia (trad. from Spanish, 2023) and Cocodrilos en la noche (2020; 2023), the bilingual poem collection El cero móvil de su boca / The Mobile Zero of Its Mouth (2020) and the hybrid book Aquí no hubo ni una estrella (2023). With George Handley, Heffes served as co-president of ASLE, the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (2022-2024).

Poul Holm (https://www.tcd.ie/tceh/people/HOLMP) is President of the Humanities for the Environment. His day job is as a Professor of Environmental History at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Poul is a pioneer of global marine environmental history. In the past two decades he has been at the forefront of developing modes of inquiry into human exploitation of the sea and understanding the impact of human extractions for the marine environment. He directed the History of Marine Animal Populations project (2000-2010) with 15 teams and more than 100 researchers (historians, archaeologists, marine scientists) and established baselines for historical fisheries of main commercial species and in major habitats. In 2015-2021, he led a European Research Council Advanced Grant, NorFish, which pioneered Big Data analytics, DeepChart Mapping, and historical ocean productivity modelling on the basis of multinational, multi-archival research. In 2021-2027 he leads an ERC Synergy project 4-OCEANS on the global history of humans and marine life through the last two millennia.

Poul has a keen eye for the relevance today of the past, and likes to explore new fields, often in interdisciplinary contexts. He co-authored the Humanities World Report in 2015 which is a global review of the state of the humanities and emerging research fields.  Poul co-chaired the SAPEA (Science Advice for Policy by European Academies) report titled Food From the Oceans which examines the question of how the ocean can help satisfy the global demand for food.  https://www.sapea.info/sapea-provides-evidence-for-the-european-commission-on-food-from-the-oceans/

Poul is Vice President (ex officio) of Academia Europaea and Chair of the Humanities Class.

Hsinya Huang is Distinguished Professor of American and Comparative Literature, National Sun Yat-Sen University (NSYSU), Taiwan. She is former Dean of Arts and Humanities and Provost of Academic Affairs and Faculty Advancement, NSYSU. She served as Director General of International Cooperation and Science Education, Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, 2018-19. She is the author or editor of books and articles on Native American and Indigenous literatures, eco-criticism, transnational studies, including (De)Colonizing the Body: Disease, Empire, and (Alter)Native Medicine in Contemporary Native American Women’s Writings (2004) and Native North American Literatures: Reflections on Multiculturalism (2009), Aspects of Transnational and Indigenous Cultures (2014), Ocean and Ecology in the Trans-Pacific Context (2016), and Chinese Railroad Workers: Recovery and Representation (2017). She serves on the Advisory Board of The Journal of Transnational American Studies and Routledge series on Transnational Indigenous Perspectives and on the Editorial Board of Transmotion: A Journal of Vizenorian Indigenous Studies. Her current research project investigates the Anthropocene in trans-Pacific Indigenous and Arctic Writing.

Professor Ogude obtained his B.Ed (Hons) and MA from Nairobi University and his PhD in African Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand. Professor Ogude holds a NRF “B3” rating for the quality and impact of his research outputs.

He is the author of Ngugi’s Novels and African History: Narrating the Nation, London: Pluto Press, 1999. He has also co-edited, Urban Legends, Colonial Myths: Popular Culture and Literature in East Africa, Trenton: Africa World Press, 2007, Rethinking Eastern African Literary and Intellectual Landscapes, published in 2012 by Africa World Press, New Jersey and more recently edited ‘Chinua Achebe’s Legacy: Illuminations from Africa, published in 2015 by the Africa Institute of South Africa, Pretoria. Professor Ogude has published numerous articles in peer reviewed journals in the area of African Literature and Popular Culture in East Africa

Currently, he is Deputy Director and Research Fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria – a position he took up at the beginning of May, 2013.

Sophie Chao is Discovery Early Career Researcher Award Fellow and Lecturer in the Discipline of Anthropology at the University of Sydney. Her research investigates the intersections of Indigeneity, ecology, capitalism, health, and justice in the Pacific. Chao is author of In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua and co-editor of The Promise of Multispecies Justice. She is also co-editor of engaged outputs including the volumes Conflict or Consent? The Oil Palm Sector at a Crossroads and Oil Palm Expansion in Southeast Asia: Trends and Implications for Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples, and Diverse Paths to Justice: Legal Pluralism and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Southeast Asia. Sophie previously worked for the human rights organization Forest Peoples Programme in Indonesia, supporting the rights of forest-dwelling Indigenous peoples to their lands, resources, and livelihoods. She is of Sino-French heritage and lives on unceded Gadigal lands in Australia.

Website: www.morethanhumanworlds.com

Craig Santos Perez is an indigenous Chamoru from Guam. He holds an MFA in Creative writing from the University of San Francisco and a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of six books of poetry and the academic monograph Navigating Chamoru Poetry: Indigeneity, Aesthetics, and Decolonization (2022). He is also the co-editor of seven anthologies, including Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia (2019) and Indigenous Pacific Islander Eco-Literatures (2022). He is a professor in the English department and affiliate faculty with the Center for Pacific Islands Studies and the Indigenous Politics program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

For further information: www.craigsantosperez.com

Thom van Dooren is a field philosopher and writer. He is Deputy Director of the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney. His work is situated in the interdisciplinary environmental humanities with particular grounding in cultural studies, philosophy, and science and technology studies. His research and writing focus on the diverse ethical, cultural, and philosophical issues that arise in the context of species extinctions and human entanglements with threatened species and places. He has explored these themes in depth in three books: A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions (MIT 2022), The Wake of Crows: Living and Dying in Shared Worlds (Columbia UP 2019), and Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction (Columbia UP 2014). With Deborah Bird Rose, he was founding editor of the journal Environmental Humanities (Duke University Press). He has held advisory and visiting positions at key environmental humanities institutes around the world, including a Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers at the Rachel Carson Centre, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (2014-16), and a Professor II appointment at the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities at the University of Oslo (2020-2022). His research has been funded by a range of other grants and fellowships, including an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2017-2021), and several ARC Discovery Projects.

For further information: http://www.thomvandooren.org

Herman Vladimir Ruíz Abecasis is a Peruvian biologist, born in Loreto, with extensive experience in the evaluation of biological diversity, and practice in the management of natural protected areas by the government in the Peruvian Amazon. As an environmental specialist, Abecasis has worked in the development of scientific reports, and environmental impact assessments in connection to oil drilling in the Amazon basin. He has done extensive work with communities in the interior of the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve, implementing programs of environmental education and natural resource management, for the sustainable use of flora and fauna in Peruvian national reserves. As a biologist he has also worked as an Environmental Specialist of the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve and, and for Pronaturaleza, he has worked as coordinator of the project “Strengthening of Tourism Management and Management of Natural Resources in the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve”. In regards to the assessment of water systems of Amazonia, Abecasis wrote the book article “Amazonia: Looking for the Earthly Eden and Finding the Planet’s Next Landfill” (Ecological Crisis and Cultural Representation in Latin America, Lexington books, 2016) along with the Colombian biologist Diego Mejía and Juan Carlos Galeano. Through his career in Perú, Abecasis has held positions in public and private institutions, gaining experience not only in natural resources, but also in the management of human resources as he has served as head of the National Reserve of Pacaya Samiria National Reserve in the Amazon basin. He is currently director of the Alpahuallo Mishana Reserve in the Peruvian Amazon.

http://www.pronaturaleza.org

http://www.sernanp.gob.pe

Jada Ach is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Arizona State University where she teaches in the Interdisciplinary Studies and Master of Liberal Studies programs. In 2019, Ach earned her Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of South Carolina, and her research often combines insights from literary studies, the desert humanities, and land management history. She is the author of Sand, Water, Salt: Managing the Elements in Literature of the American West, 1880-1925 (Texas Tech UP, 2021) and co-editor of Reading Aridity in Western American Literature (Lexington Books, 2020). Jada co-organizes the Inter/Desert Dialogues series at Arizona State University and is the Humanities Director for Science the Earth, an Arizona-based nonprofit organization that specializes in connecting community members with research scientists, interdisciplinary scholars, community leaders, and industry professionals.

Rimjhim Aggarwal is an Associate Professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University (ASU). Her research and teaching interests lie at the interface between sustainability science and international development. A central focus of her research has been on examining the links between globalization, resilience of social-ecological systems, and human well-being. Her most recent project on Activating Global Citizenship through the UN Sustainable Development Goals is funded through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She is also currently working on a multidisciplinary project funded by the National Science Foundation on Innovations in Food, Energy and Water Nexus. Together with Joni Adamson, Aggarwal co-led a PLuS Alliance collaborative project on “Humanities for the Anthropocene: Developing New Approaches to Knowledge, Engagement and Impact.” In past research, Aggarwal has examined the emerging conflicts in the framing of water as a human right as well as an economic, ecological and social good in rapidly urbanizing regions, with focus on Delhi, São Paulo and Johannesburg. Aggarwal has previously worked as a consultant for the World Bank and the United Nations University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research on various projects related to sustainability, globalization and the world’s poor. In recognition of her efforts in “use-inspired research” and “community outreach,” she was awarded the ASU President’s Award for Sustainability. She is also a recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award.

Dr. Abigail Pérez Aguilera researches and writes about contemporary Indigenous movements, literature written by women of colour and its connections to environmental social movements, forced displacement, gender violence, and global politics. Her most recent work appears in Ecocriticism and Indigenous Studies: Conversations from Earth to Cosmos (ed. Joni Adamson and Salma Monani; Routledge, 2017). She is currently teaching at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Julie Anand is Associate Professor of Photography in the School of Art and Senior Sustainability Scholar in the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Her projects, informed by a background in Ecology and Geology, often explore material culture, body/land relations and issues of interdependency/boundary.

Raymond Anthony is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alaska Anchorage and specialize in environmental, food, animal and agricultural ethics, and ethical theory and the philosophy of technology. Currently, he is pursuing values-aware research in global food security, sustainability, animal welfare and climate ethics. He serves as Ethics Advisor for the American Veterinary Medical Association’s Animal Welfare Committee and Panels on Euthanasia, Humane Slaughter and Depopulation. You may find more information about his research, teaching and service at: https://alaska.digication.com/raymond_anthony_professor_of_philosophy/Welcome/published

Liron Arieli’s work and academic interests center on equity-centered sustainability, interdisciplinary environmental research, and community-engaged approaches to addressing global environmental challenges. She is particularly interested in how the environmental humanities can bridge research, policy, and place-based knowledge through collaborative and justice-oriented frameworks. She serves as the Communications Coordinator for the UNESCO BRIDGES Flagship and the Create the Change grant initiative at Arizona State University. Arieli is a master’s student in Urban and Environmental Planning at Arizona State University and is pursuing a graduate certificate in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). She earned a B.A. in Sustainability with a minor in Political Science from ASU in 2024.

Thorvardur Arnason has a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary environmental studies, focusing primarily on environmental philosophy and politics. His main research interests concern landscape and wilderness, nature conservation, climate change, sustainable tourism and sustainable rural development. Thorvardur has been the Director of the University of Iceland’s Hornafjörður Research Centre since 2006. He is also an assistant research professor in environmental studies at the University of Iceland and has supervised more than 20 graduate students. His previous work experience includes three years as Managing Director of the Icelandic National Bioethics Committee and seven years as researcher at the Centre for Ethical Studies, University of Iceland. Since 1998 Thorvardur has taught university level courses in e.g. management of protected areas, environmental ethics, sustainable tourism and philosophy of science. He has been the project leader of several large-scale research projects in Iceland and has also taken part in numerous multi-national research and/or development projects. Thorvardur Arnason has been a board member of the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies since 2010.

Dag Avango, PhD in History of Technology, is a researcher at KTH-Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. In his research, he has primarily dealt with the relationship between resource extraction, science and (geo)politics in the polar regions from a long term historical perspective. A related field of research is on legacies of industry and how communities deal with such legacies when building post-industrial futures, through remediation and heritage processes.

Dag Avango’s research is situated at the interface between archaeology and history, based on the theoretical assumption that material objects and environments play an active role in society and therefore should be considered in explanations of historical change, and following this the methodological approach of combining archival studies with archaeological fieldwork. Dag Avango has published widely and also run graduate and post-graduate education on those topics.

Dag Avango is the XO of the Nordic Centre of Excellence REXSAC – Resource Extraction and Sustainable Arctic Communities (www.rexsac.com). He also leads research projects under the umbrella of REXSAC, entitled Mining heritage as a resource for sustainable communities (https://www.kth.se/profile/avango/page/mining-heritage-as-a-resource-for-sustainable-communities) and is involved in a project exploring heritage processes in Antarctica. For more information on publications and research projects of Dag Avango, see https://dagavango.com/

One of the significant aspects I bring to this group of academics is providing artistic methodologies & processes to complement & represent the research findings to a mass multi-cultural audience. The goal and vision of my art is to elicit participation and deliver a philosophy of collaboration and cooperation. Themes include repurposing, beauty, resilience, biodiversity, sharing, composting, water harvesting, LFE (local food economy),urban gardening, social justice & reciprocity. This practice of socially engaged art, awakens our senses to the possible. It invites right brain thinking. It supports the necessary shift in how we think about and engage with the natural world. It is an art practice that empowers people. Change for the better happens when we tap into human emotion.  We become excited when we experience what the Earth produces and how delicious “homegrown” foods taste! AND, we become inspired, find a sense of purpose & reverence through our multi-sensory experiences with Art.

Currently, Joan is facilitating The Heritage Grain Trials at Clark Park Community Gardens in Tempe, AZ…a program  developed by the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, whose co-founders (Bill McDorman & Belle Starr) are based in Cornville, Az. This program  introduces  ancient grains, to be included as part of a comprehensive farming system that focuses on growing the highest  source of  caloric intake.  In addition, Joan’s “FoodintheAlley” recently added the LEHR Garden methodology. This food production system is regenerative;  using compostable materials to produce rich soil from the ground up. It grows food faster, seeking to provide a much needed solution to food deserts.

Kieran Baxter received his PhD in landscape heritage visualisation from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design at the University of Dundee. His research is based in creative practice and explores the interaction between visualisation technologies, filmmaking, science communication and landscape issues. In 2016 he received the AHRC Research in Film doctoral award for his short film which combined aerial photography and computer modelling to tell the story of a prehistoric cultural landscape in his native Scotland. His interest is in how creative practice – facilitated by the latest in aerial and digital technologies – can communicate specialist knowledge of our environment to a general audience. This line of enquiry has led his visual practice from the cultural heritage of Scotland to the glacial landscapes of Iceland and the Alps. By better understanding how visualisation technologies operate in the context of visual culture and art practice, his research aims to improve the outreach tools available to scientists and environmental specialists.

Kieran’s heritage-focused work: www.topofly.com
Kieran’s climate-focused work: www.climatevis.com.

Dr Julie Bond is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences, University of Bradford. Dr Bond’s research has focused on the impact of climate and environment and the stability of agrarian strategies in marginal environments, mostly in the Northern Isles of Britain, using multiperiod settlements as a way of studying change over long time sequences. She is interested in the social and economic impact of Viking Landnám in the North Atlantic settlements, through excavations and research projects such as Pool, Orkney, Tofts Ness, Orkney (with Steve Dockrill), Old Scatness and Jarlshof, Shetland (with Steve Dockrill) and the Viking Unst Project, Shetland. She is currently co-directing (with Steve Dockrill) the excavation of an eroding coastal site at Swandro, on the Island of Rousay as part of the Gateway to the Atlantic Project; an international research-based Field School investigating the island of Rousay, Orkney, with Drs Stephen Dockrill, Ingrid Mainland, Ruth Maher, Jane Downes and Julie Gibson .Dr Bond lectures on the Viking settlement of the North Atlantic, Archaeozoology, Archaeobotany and advanced methods in Archaeology. Dr Bond is joint holder (with Steve Dockrill) of the University of Bradford’s Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award 2015 for the development of teaching methods in archaeological fieldwork and a student-nominated commendation in the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement 2017, for her work in the School of Archaeology and for teaching of Viking archaeology.

Robert Boschman is a professor in the Department of English, Languages, and Cultures at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is co-founder of the award-winning Under Western Skies biennial conference series on the environment held at Mount Royal from 2010 to 2016. A past president of the Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada, Dr. Boschman specializes in ecological approaches to teaching American literature, with emphasis on the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. His monograph, In the Way of Nature: Ecology and Westward Movement in the Poetry of Anne Bradstreet, Elizabeth Bishop and Amy Clampitt, was published in 2009, and has been reviewed in journals internationally, including Anglia: A Journal of English Philology, ISLE, University of Toronto Quarterly, Choice, and The Goose. Found in Alberta: Environmental Themes for the Anthropocene (co-edited with Mario Trono) was published in 2014 by Wilfrid Laurier University Press; and On Active Grounds: Agency and Time in the Environmental Humanities will be published by WLUP in 2018. Boschman’s book about growing up in northern Saskatchewan, The Ride Along: A Memoir of Place, Family, and Intergenerational Trauma, is forthcoming from the University of Regina Press. He also collaborates with Bill Bunn in documenting the abandoned mining town of Uranium City on the north of Lake Athabasca–their co-authored, open-access article, “Nuclear Avenue: ‘Cyclonic Development’, Abandonment, and Relations in Uranium City, Canada” was published in Humanities in January 2018. Boschman’s work in environmental still photography can be viewed at robertboschman.com.

Ruth Brennan is the principal investigator on CO-SUSTAIN Collaborative Sustainable Innovation: co-designing governance approaches for a sustainable and innovative small-scale fishing industry in the Irish islands. She is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow (2018-2020) in the Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities at Trinity College Dublin where she works as a marine social scientist drawing from fields such as marine science (natural and social), environmental humanities, political ecology, law and anthropology. She specialises in ethnographies of small coastal communities and environmental governance at the arts-science-policy interface. Her work offers insights into different ways marine and coastal spaces are conceptualised by users, managers and human-environment interactions, how this relates to natural resource governance challenges and what it means for community engagement. Her research has been published in academic journals and her art-science work has been widely exhibited.

Cristina Brito is an Assistant Professor at the History Department and the Head of CHAM – Center for the Humanities (2020-2022) both at NOVA FCSH (tje School of Social Sciences, Arts and the Humanities of NOVA University of Lisbon. She is currently the co-PI of the ERC Synergy Grant 4-OCEANS (2021-2027) and the PI of two EEA Grants Bilateral Funds Initiatives (Marine Lexicon and H-WHALE).

She is also a member of the Board of OPI – Oceans Past Initiative, and an active member of several international networks and research projects, within the thematic line of research (Environmental History and the Sea), such as the UNESCO Chair on Oceans’ Cultural Heritage and the H2020 RISE project CONCHA.

She holds a PhD in History – History of the Portuguese Discoveries and Expansion, NOVA FCSH, a Masters in Ethology from ISPA, and a Bachelor’s degree in Biology Applied to Animal Resources – Marine Resources, Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon. Prior to her current positions, she has been awarded a Research Contract by the Portuguese FCT (IF/00610/2015) to investigate ‘Cow-fish, ngulu-maza or iguaragua? Local and Global Knowledge Production, Changing Perceptions and Practices on Marine Animals in the Atlantic, 1419–1758’ (2016-2019), and she has secured a grant for a short-term research mission at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University (2018). Cristina Brito has an interdisciplinary, comparative and cross-cultural approach to her research. Her scientific interests include early modern marine environmental history, local and global perceptions and practices and uses of the seas, Atlantic and oceanic histories, humans and nonhumans relationships, and new perspectives on the environmental humanities, including interactions between science and the arts.