Participants

Virtual Scholars

Leo Bernucci,

Ph.D.

Bio

Marcos Colón,

Ph.D.

Bio

Thom van

Dooren, Ph.D.

Bio

Gretchen Henderson,

Ph.D.

Bio

Katherine

Lieberknecht, Ph.D.

Bio

Beili Liu,

M.F.A.

Bio

Joan McGregor,

Ph.D.

Bio

Tafadzwa
Mushonga, Ph.D.

Bio

Robert Myers,

Ph.D.

Bio

David

Schlosberg, Ph.D.

Bio

Christy

Spackman, Ph.D.

Bio

Rebecca Tsosie,

J.D.

Bio

Christine

Winter, Ph.D.

Bio

Leo Bernucci, Ph.D.

Amazonian History and Literature

Distinguished Professor of Spanish | University of California, Davis | USA

Marcos Colón, Ph.D.

Ecocriticism | Ecofilm | Environment and Ecology of the Amazon

Postdoctoral Scholar | Modern Languages and Literature | Florida State University | USA

Thom van Dooren, Ph.D.

Field Philosopher and Writer

Deputy Director | Sydney Environment Institute | Australia

University of Sydney | University of Oslo | Norway

Gretchen Henderson, Ph.D.

Writer | Artist | Scholar

Senior Lecturer | Steve Hicks School of Social Works

University of Texas at Austin | USA

Gretchen E. Henderson (M.F.A., Ph.D.) writes across environmental arts, cultural histories, and interdisciplinary humanities where creative and critical practices cross-pollinate. Her fifth book, Life in the Tar Seeps: Overlooked Ecologies at Great Salt Lake & Beyond (forthcoming Trinity University Press), has been seeping through intermedia publications and exhibitions, including Ecotone (Notable in Best American Essays 2020), Mining the West (in collaboration with the Utah Museum of Fine Arts), Scholarly Texts (with the Holt-Smithson Foundation), with coauthored articles including Nature Sustainability and Conservation Biology. Her work on environmental aesthetics grows from her last book, Ugliness: A Cultural History (Reaktion 2015), that has been translated into Turkish, Korean, Chinese, and Spanish editions. Gretchen is currently a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin, where she previously was Associate Director for Research at the Harry Ransom Center and a Faculty Fellow at the Humanities Institute. In 2022, Gretchen is a Fellow at the Women’s International Studies Center in Santa Fe, as well as the Aldo & Estella Leopold Writer-in-Residence, also in New Mexico.

Katherine Lieberknecht, Ph.D.

Urban Water Resources Planning | Sustainable Land Use Planning | Metropolitan-Scaled Green Infrastructure | Urban Climate Planning

Assistant Professor | Community Planning | University of Texas at Austin | USA

Katherine Lieberknecht is an assistant professor in the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include urban water resources planning, metropolitan-scaled green infrastructure planning, and urban climate planning. Dr. Lieberknecht teaches courses on sustainable land use planning, water resources planning, and urban ecology. Her recent publications include  “Community-centered climate planning: Using Local Knowledge and Communication Frames to Catalyze Climate Planning in Texas,” “Hurricane Harvey: equal opportunity storm or disparate disaster?” and “Traits of a bloom in urban greening: a nationwide survey of US urban tree planting initiatives (TPIs).” Dr. Lieberknecht received her PhD in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University.

Beili Liu, M.F.A.

Virtual Artist

Leslie Waggener Teaching Professor | College of Fine Arts

University of Texas at Austin | USA

Joan McGregor, Ph.D.

Food Justice | Food Sustainability | Environmental Ethics

Professor of Philosophy | Senior Sustainability Scholar, Global Institute for Sustainability | Arizona State University | USA

Joan McGregor is a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies. Dr. McGregor’s research interests include the eithics of sustainability, food justice, and legal and practical philiosophies. Her current research has been focused on issues of food, food justice,  and food sustainability. She recently published an article arguing for the intersection of food, climate, and environmental injustices and the dignitary harms that result. A major on-going public project focusing on food grew out of the Mellon funded Humanities for the Anthropocene, entitled: Dinner 2040: The Future of Food. With Rebecca Tsosie, she collaborated on a project entitled “Governing Monsters Bioethics, Human Monsters, and Frankenfoods: Global Monster Narratives and Emerging Technologies.” Tsosie and McGregor collaborated on many projects of note was: “Genome Justice: The law and ethics of population genomics.” She received her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Arizona and minored in Law.

Tafadzwa Mushonga, Ph.D.
Research Fellow | Environment and Society, Political Ecology, Environmental Humanities | University of Pretoria | South Africa

Tafadzwa is broadly interested in environmental and societal issues, with a particular interest in violent environmentalism. Her work particularly traces the socio-economic and political relationship in resource use and management and critiques violent approaches to environmental management. She has so far contributed to the body of work on the militarization of conservation and the impact of conservation violence on communities that depend on resources enclosed in protected areas. She has led the extractivism and the environment program within the broader framework of Environmental Humanities at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship. This role expands her interest in violent environmentalism to other extractive industries such as mining, fisheries, and water

Robert Myers, Ph.D.

Playwright | Theatre Scholar

Director | Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR)

American University of Beirut | Lebanon

David Schlosberg, Ph.D.

Environmental Political Theory

Professor of Environmental Politics | Director of Sydney Environment Institute

University of Sydney | Australia

Christy Spackman, Ph.D.

Food Studies | Sensory Science

Assistant Professor | School for the Future of Innovation in Society

Arizona State University | USA

Christy Spackman is an assistant professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. She studies the environmental and social impact of scientific and technological efforts to manipulate sensory experiences of smelling and tasting. Her publications include “Embodied rationality: a framework of human action in water infrastructure governance,” “The impact of temporary COVID-19 legislative moves on the ability of food enterprises to pivot in Arizona,” and “Follow the Ferments.” Dr. Spackman obtained her PhD from New York University.

Rebecca Tsosie, J.D.

Federal Indian Law | Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights

Regents Professor | Morris K. Udall Professor of Law

University of Arizona | USA

Rebecca Tsosie is a Regents Professor at the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona. Her research interests include Federal Indian law and indigenous peoples’ human rights, sovereignty, self-determination, cultural pluralism, environmental policy and cultural rights. Her publications include “American Indian Law:  Native Nations and the Federal System,” “Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples:  Comparative Models of Sovereignty, in Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples:  The Search for Legal Remedies,” and “Indigenous Human Rights and the Ethics of Remediation:  Redressing the Legacy of Radioactive Contamination for Native Peoples and Native Lands.” Dr. Tsosie received her J.D. from the UCLA School of Law.

Christine Winter, Ph.D.

Intergenerational, Indigenous, and Environmental Justice

Lecturer | Department of Government and International Relations

University of Sydney | Australia