Editorial Board

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The Edge Effects editorial board is composed of graduate students and a faculty advisor from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Culture, History, and Environment.

Managing Editor

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Weishun Lu (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department (Literary Studies). Her research interests include contemporary poetry and ethnic humor. In particular, she looks at affective relations evoked by politically engaged literature and rhetoric. Contact.


Faculty Advising Editor

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Noreen McAuliffe (she/her) is a lecturer in English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her work focuses on the effects of global environmental change on human and more-than-human lives. Her interests include the environmental humanities, creativity in science, and multimedia science communication. Her writing has appeared in The Common, The Baltimore Review, and Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and was named “Notable” in Best American Essays. She’s been awarded the Alces Foundation Environmental Writing Fellowship, a New York State Writers Institute scholarship, a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship, and a Waitt Grant from the National Geographic Society. Contact.


Editorial Board

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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.


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Kristen Billings (she/her) is a Ph.D. student in Community and Environmental Sociology. Her current research investigates the environmental impacts of militarism and situates resistance to U.S. military pollution and occupation within anti-imperial and abolitionist struggles. Contact.


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Kuhelika Ghosh (she/her) is a literary studies Ph.D. student in the English department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 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.


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Rebecca Laurent (she/her) is a PhD 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.


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Bri Meyer (she/her) is Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology. She does multispecies ethnography with the American Saddlebred show horse community to study caring bonds across species that are collaborative, embodied, and gendered. She is also invested in discussions on the accessibility of anthropology and ethnographic writing, and how the “genre” of ethnography relates to and differs from other genres of literature. Website. Contact.


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Rudy Molinek (he/him) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geoscience. His research investigates the history of the vast glacial ice sheet that has periodically covered northern North America over the past 2.5 million years. He also hosts and produces the podcast Under Our Feet, which tells stories of the geologic forces and events that shape the world around us. Rudy holds an M.S. in Earth Science from the University of Minnesota. Website. Twitter. Contact.


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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. Contact.


Prerna Rana (she/her) is a PhD 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.


Audio Editors

Rudy Molinek (he/him) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geoscience. His research investigates the history of the vast glacial ice sheet that has periodically covered northern North America over the past 2.5 million years. He also hosts and produces the podcast Under Our Feet, which tells stories of the geologic forces and events that shape the world around us. Rudy holds an M.S. in Earth Science from the University of Minnesota. Website. Twitter. Contact.


Previous editorial board members of Edge Effects include: Bailey Albrecht, Mohammed Rafi Arefin, Adam Behrman, Nicole Bennett, Jake Blanc, Rachel Boothby (Managing Editor), Helen J. Bullard, Charles Carlin, Oindrila Chattopadhyay, William Cronon (Faculty Advising Editor), Doron Darnov, Daniel Grant, W. Nathan Green, Spring Greeney, Carly Griffith, Rachel Gross, Brian Hamilton (Managing Editor), Elizabeth Hennessy (Faculty Advising Editor), Addie Hopes (Managing Editor), Justyn Huckleberry, Ben Iuliano (Managing Editor), Nathan Jandl (Managing Editor), Mary-Kate Keran, Juniper Lewis, Adam Mandelman (Managing Editor), Jessica Montez, Eric Nost, Travis Olson, Mario Ortiz-Robles (Faculty Advising Editor), Laura Perry (Managing Editor), Carl Sack, Clare Sullivan, Rebecca Summer (Managing Editor), John Suval, Sara Gabler Thomas, Emmanuel Urey, Stepha Velednitsky, Kate Wersan, Kaitlin Stack Whitney, Richelle Wilson (Managing Editor).


Featured image: Built in 1887, Science Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the home to the Edge Effects office. Image courtesy of the UW-Madison Collection.