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I'm a PhD candidate in the history of science at Princeton University, where I study the history of
the life sciences and environmental politics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. My work engages
with the
histories of
science, technology, and political thought, environmental history, and North American Indigenous history.
My past research has 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. My doctoral dissertation examines growing doubts regarding a
fundamental balance in nature among ecologists and evolutionary biologists in the twentieth century, tracing
the consequences of this shift in international environmental thought and politics.
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.
dialogue
“Towards a ‘Science of Surprise’: The Origins of Resilience Thinking in Postwar Systems
Ecology”
American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, March 2026.
“Conservation in the Corn State: Agribusiness, Ecosystem Services, and the Transformation of Iowa
Public Land Management, 1950-1990”
Presentation for co-organized panel “States of the Environmental Management State: Imagining and Forging
Novel Ecologies in Modern
America” at the American Society for Environmental History annual meeting,
April 2025.
“Sovereignty through Stewardship: Wild Rice, Minnesota Ojibwe Resurgence, and the Politics of
Relational Restoration”
Technologies of Sovereignty Graduate Conference, Columbia University, February 2025.
“Temporal Recipe Knowledge in the Early Modern English Household”
Princeton University Early Modern History Workshop, October 3, 2024.
“Theory and Practice in the Prairie: Plant Community Structure and the Foundations of Restoration
Ecology”
History of Science Society Annual Conference, November 2022.
“A Tragedy in Common: H. Scott Gordon, the Fisherman's Problem, and the Rationalizing High Modernism
of Cold War Bioeconomics”
McGill-Queen's Graduate History Conference, March 2022.
“‘He was on Your Side and You Knew It’: A Profile of Harvey Stork, Professor of Botany and Founder
of the Carleton Arboretum”
Public Lecture at Carleton College, May 2019.