top of page

Dissertation Research

I broadly study the meaning of "extinction," a concept that is ubiquitous in biology, but whose definition is much harder to pin down than most people would realize. I study the history of "extinction" as a concept, the definitions that conservationists hold regarding extinction now, and the emotional experiences that come with living or working amidst extinction.

I have been interviewing conservationists who work with endangered species in the US and Mexico about their definitions of extinction and their emotional experiences that come with working amidst an extinction crisis. These interviews have shown me how little space conservationists have to openly grieve for the more-than-humans they work with. I hope to travel to conservation conferences in the future and create arts-based grief rituals to create spaces for ecological grief in science.

Key fields and concepts

Ecological grief: the grief felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems and meaningful landscapes due to acute or chronic environmental change (Cunsolo and Ellis, 2018)
 

Eco-grief is emerging as a mental health response to ongoing ecological destruction. Multiple scholars have described and define ecological grief, and characterized the experiences of eco-grieving activists or climate researchers. Few have done such work with conservationists who work with endangered species. 

I interview conservationists to understand what experiences elicit ecological grief and characterize their experience of grief

Extinction studies scholarship focuses on complicating the idea of extinction by attending to human entanglements with more-than-human beings. Inspired by this field of study, much of my research entails writing auto-ethnographically about encounters with the more-than-human world, as well as interrogating the meaning of "extinction" that is articulated in other people's encounters with more-than-humans.

"Extinction Studies focuses on the entangled ecological and social dimensions of extinction, exploring the ways in which extinction catastrophically interrupts life-giving processes of time, death, and generations." (Rose, van Dooren, and Chrulew, 2015)

bottom of page