I'm a PhD candidate in the history of science at Princeton University, where I study the history and
politics of ecological thought since the mid-twentieth century. My work engages with the history of
science, environmental and political history, and North American Indigenous history.
My M.A. thesis examined how ecological restoration took shape as a concept, research agenda, and set of management practices in the Midwestern United States. I focused on the history of efforts to manage the region's characteristic grasses — prairie tallgrass, corn, and wild rice — and the competing ecological and political visions they have embodied. More recently, I've continued writing on wild rice restoration as a form of Anishinaabe worldmaking and on the evolving ideals and techniques of public land management in the Corn Belt. My prospective dissertation project, “Chaos Ecology: Science, Governance, and the End of Natural Order,” examines a lineage of twentieth-century ecologists who recast nature as dynamic and disunified, tracing the consequences of this shift across environmentalism, politics, and the social sciences.
Before starting at Princeton, I graduated from Carleton College with a B.A. in History and a background in ecological research. I went on to work as an energy analyst and climate policy advocate in Minneapolis for several years before completing an M.A. in History at Trent University in Ontario.