My research program is centered around the guiding question: How and in what ways do climate change and climate change governance (re)structure inequalities in race, class, and gender? I have a longstanding interest in applying this question in food and agriculture systems, though I am also interested in social-ecological transformations around climate change, health, and energy transitions.
As an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist, my work draws on and contributes to the fields of political ecology, environmental sociology, human geography, critical settler colonial studies, and Indigenous environmental studies. I am primarily drawn to ethnography as a method to understand grounded, everyday life experiences and social dynamics. My empirical methods also include in-depth interviews, observations, focus groups, oral histories, archival research, and discourse analysis. My research is community-engaged. Since 2019, I have worked closely with Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation, Sambaa K’e First Nation with local agricultural experts in the Northwest Territories, Canada. We collaborate on projects throughout research design, data collection, analysis, and dissemination and to promote research equity and data sovereignty.
Current Projects
1. Global Environmental Change and Development
The Arctic is a place of rapid environmental change, often portrayed as either a theatre of ruination and/or of possibility. Climate change threatens ecosystems, homes, and livelihoods, and it is also opening new possibilities for resource extraction in minerals, transportation, and food production. My doctoral work and book project, Contested Icescapes, Land, Politics, and Change on an Arctic Agricultural Frontier, critically examines the Northwest Territories, Canada, as a new agricultural frontier under climate change. By tracing the lived experiences of sub-Arctic farmers and hunters under the dual dynamics of changing climate and food systems, as well as transformations in political economy and social structures, I raise critical questions about the governance structures and strategies of development, land use, and social inequalities.
At Harvard, I am extending this project by conducting a comparative analysis of agricultural development in Arctic Canada and the US. With collaborators in the Northwest Territories and Alaska, I am exploring how contemporary policy decisions regarding agricultural land use and property rights impact impact Indigenous harvesters and commercial farmers, whose homelands and livelihoods are entangled in both land productivity and sustainability. I also collaborate with the NSF-funded International Permafrost Agroecosystem Action Group to study changing agro-ecosystems (pastoralism, agroforestry, cropping, and livestock) in permafrost regions under climate change. Examples of published work can be found here and here.
This research is supported by the National Science Foundation and a William Lyon Mackenzie King Postdoctoral Fellowship.
2. Sustainability and Justice in Food and Agriculture Systems
In my broader research program, I explore pathways to more ecologically sustainable and equitable global food and agriculture systems. This includes supporting transitions from less sustainable to more diversified farming systems, developing agriculture policy that supports Indigenous land sovereignty and local livelihoods, and supporting gender equity in agriculture value systems. I think about representation and authority in environmental governance and the outcomes of land use policy. I also collaborate with soil and ecosystem scientists to understand how agriculture practices (tilling, application of various soil amendments) impact carbon loss in permafrost-rich soils. Examples of published work here, here, and here.
This work has been supported by the Fulbright Commission.
3. Equity in Academic Research and Institutions
A third area of my work focuses on improving equity in academic research and institutions. My focus areas have been (1) research in/with Indigenous communities and on Indigenous data sovereignty, and (2) improving equity in academia for women and mothers. With the Indigenous Environmental Studies Working Group at UC Berkeley, I helped develop guidelines for conducting ethically engaged environmental research with Indigenous communities, published here. I am currently working with a collaborator in the Northwest Territories on an article about the institutional politics of recognition in Indigenous Studies in the US and Canada, based on our panel discussion at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) conference in 2023.
In an article for The Professional Geographer, my co-author Anaya Hall and I use the lens of Haraway’s situated knowledge to unpack our own experiences of mother-fieldworkers and to advocate for increased recognition and support for women in academia. At Harvard, I am working to improve living and working conditions for non-tenure-track research and teaching employees through our new academic workers union (HAW-UAW).
