Editorial Board

James T. Spartz, Ph.D. (he/him) is a writer and editor with the Institute for Research on Poverty at UW-Madison. He works at the intersection of economic inequality, poverty, communication, and community well-being. He also has strong interests in decolonialist, place-based creative nonfiction. James spent six years as a professor of environmental communication at a small, private, environmental college in Maine where he developed and taught courses including Environmental Communication, Forests and Society, Environmental Writing, and Ecomusicology and Place. His collaborative work is found in publications such as Environmental Communication, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Middle West Review, Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, and the Wisconsin Magazine of History. Contact.

Laleh Ahmad (she/her) is a master’s student in the environment and resources program. Her research focuses on disaster preparedness, resource management, and environmental governance in Pakistan. She is particularly interested in the spatial legacies of colonialism and critical development studies. Laleh is originally from Karachi, Pakistan, and worked in Washington, D.C., before coming to Madison. In her free time, you might find Laleh writing, hanging out with her cats, or haunting her local bookstore. Contact.

Kanika Ahuja (she/her) is a poet and educator from New Delhi, India. She is a first year PhD Student in Literary Studies focusing on contemporary poetics and craft as criticism. The winner of the 2023 Thomas H. Scholl and Elizabeth Boyd Thompson Poetry Prize (Purdue University) and the AWP Intro Journals Project 2022, her poems appear, or are forthcoming, at Poetry Daily, Waxwing, and elsewhere. Contact.

Tessa Archambault (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in the French department. Her work explores representations of the environment in French and Francophone literature and film from the end of the colonial era to more contemporary works. She is interested in tracing individual and collective shifts in human perceptions of nature and how these shifts are implicated in relationships to the more-than-human world. Contact.

Dylan Couch (he/him) is a Ph.D. student in literary studies. He is interested in the environmental humanities, food studies, climate fiction, and representations of apocalypse. Two fun facts: he has never broken a bone (knock on wood), and he took his first ever plane flight in 2022. Contact.

Kuhelika Ghosh (she/her) is a literary studies Ph.D. student in the English department. Her current research interests lie in the intersection of postcolonial literature and the environmental humanities, particularly considering the idea of posthumanism in the Anthropocene through an affective lens. Contact.

Ellie Kincaid (they/them) is a Ph.D. student in English literary studies. They’re interested in queer ecologies and trans sports studies, inspired by a love of being queer, in community, and outside. They’re from North Carolina, where they grew up in Chapel Hill and got their BA at Davidson College. Contact.

Rebecca Laurent (she/her) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology and Community and Environmental Sociology. Her work is focused on environmental politics and (in)justice, including the entanglement of oil and state, the cultural hegemony of fossil fuels, and the repression of environmental activism. Rebecca holds a master’s degree in natural resources and environmental sciences from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Contact.

Kayleigh Lobdell (they/them) is a PhD student in literary studies, with previous Masters in English Literature (2023) and Adolescent English Education (2020). Their work is in contemporary women’s and Native American speculative/dystopian fiction, and in particular, they explore how issues of fertility, race, the environment, and “child protection” policies intersect within and beyond fiction. Contact.

Samm Newton (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department (History of Science, Medicine, and Technology). Her current research explores the intersection of ocean expertise, governance, and ethics—particularly in the context of deep ocean environments, the Gulf of Mexico, and global geopolitics. Samm is on leave for FA24. Contact.

Prerna Rana (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in Civil Society and Community Research in the School of Human Ecology. Her current research focuses on the power and politics of community development, looking at civil society organizations that partner with each other to advance community wellbeing in rural India. Her research interests include power and collective action, grassroots community development, and food and environmental justice. Contact.

Nicolás Felipe Rueda Rey (he/him) is a Colombian historian specializing in the socio-cultural and environmental history of global tobacco. His research interests include political ecology and environmental justice, particularly the multiple nuances in the scales of socio-environmental extractivist phenomena. Contact.