University of Utah Environmental Humanities Graduate Program

08/24/2026

Today is the first day of school for many students at the U, but the newest cohort of graduate students in the Environmental Humanities Program got a little early start with orientation at ! 🌿📚

We’re so excited to welcome our new students and can’t wait to see all they accomplish this semester! 🎉

08/07/2026

EH, represent! (That’s three alumni!)

Join us for LAKE EFFECT, a panel discussion on the relationship between the Great Salt Lake and snowpack in the Wasatch Mountains. Thursday, August 27th, at Our Lady of the Snows in Alta, Utah. Doors open at 6 PM and event starts at 6:30 PM. This event is free, but sign-up is required (we need to know how many chairs to set up!).

Sign up: https://altacommunity.org/events/2026/great-salt-lake-panel

Presented by ACE, Torrey House Press, Grow the Flow, Save Our Canyons, and Friends of Alta, LAKE EFFECT is a call to understand the connection between the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Mountains and how we can defend the greatest snow on earth. Featuring Ayja Bounous and Teri Harman, writers and contributors to the anthology The Once and Future Lake: Stories for Great Salt Lake; Jake Dreyfous, managing director of Grow the Flow; and Jack Stauss, Executive Director of Save Our Canyons; and moderated by Torrey House Press Executive Director Kirsten Johanna Allen, LAKE EFFECT invites a community discussion on how to maintain a legacy of winter for future generations.

07/20/2026

Summer is an exciting time for our Environmental Humanities graduate students to dive into research and community engagement! 🫘

This summer, Rikki Longino is continuing to work for the Salt Lake City Public Library and partner with Going to Seed, a local and national nonprofit that helps provide gardeners and farmers with the knowledge, skills and resources to grow locally adapted, genetically diverse crops.

Rikki is conducting and transcribing interviews with local growers about seeds that are important to them. These interviews will contribute to building a local “seed memory bank.” Important seeds identified through the interviews will be distributed through the Salt Lake City Public Library along with a booklet that will include stories and insights from the interviews.

07/20/2026

Summer is an exciting time for our Environmental Humanities graduate students to dive into research and community engagement! ☀️

This summer, Ruby Gary is building relationships with local organizations that serve people with lived experience of homelessness like Unsheltered Utah and Wasatch Community Garden’s City Farm. She is preparing to interview people with lived experience of homelessness in Utah about how they understand and experience climate change.

In the Salt Lake Valley, communities experiencing homelessness are on the frontlines of climate change-related environmental impacts, such as extreme heat, unpredictable weather events, and worsening air pollution.

07/20/2026

Summer is an exciting time for our Environmental Humanities graduate students to dive into research and community engagement!💧

This summer, Emma Duggleby is researching “hidden” water in Utah, including desert washes, the shorelines of ancient Lake Bonneville, dwindling wetlands, and biological soil crusts. She is also building relationships with local environmental organizations like Of Salt and Sand and Making Waves Artist Collaborative to imagine ways to contribute to narrative change about water in Utah.

07/20/2026

Summer is an exciting time for our Environmental Humanities graduate students to dive into research and community engagement! 🦌

This summer, Ian Hanesworth is researching how hunters understand human-animal relationships. They are conducting interviews with deer and elk hunters to explore how they think about and relate to animals they hunt. They are also writing several creative nonfiction pieces about their own experiences as a hunter.

Photo credit: Brandon Scott Herrell

07/20/2026

Summer is an exciting time for our Environmental Humanities graduate students to dive into research and community engagement! 🌽

This summer, Maya Gomez-Coultas is researching how corn transitioned from food to fuel (corn ethanol). Maya is investigating archival materials, conducting field visits to corn ethanol factories in Nebraska, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and arranging interviews with people in the corn ethanol industry. Maya also presented her research at the International Association for Society and Natural Resources (IASNR)!

07/20/2026

Summer is an exciting time for our Environmental Humanities graduate students to dive into research and community engagement! 🛶

This summer, Matt Williams is researching how backcountry river recreationists understand and talk about the Colorado River Basin. While working as a river guide, he is engaging in participant observation and conducting semi-structured interviews to capture how backcountry river recreationists relate to the Colorado River Basin and what this might mean for the future of the river.

The Colorado River Basin covers 15% of the contiguous United States and sustains over 40 million people in seven states, 30 Tribal Nations, and Mexico. It is the most over-allocated River in the world, and this year the legal agreements governing allocations of Colorado River water expire. Stakeholders are working around the clock to equitably and legally reduce annual consumption by at least 20%, with an existentially threatening phenomenon known as "deadpool" looming on the horizon.

07/20/2026

Summer is an exciting time for our Environmental Humanities graduate students to dive into research and community engagement! 🌺

This summer, Jachelle Araiza is partnering with Mālama Learning Center, a West Oʻahu–based, community-centered environmental nonprofit integrates ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) into conservation and youth education programs.

Hawaiʻi is home to the highest number of federally listed endangered species of plants and animals in what is considered the United States, and conservation efforts often rely on Western scientific approaches that focus on managing ecological threats like invasive species. However, these approaches have historically developed alongside systems that displaced Indigenous relationships to land and knowledge. In West Oʻahu, community organizations are working to shift this dynamic by centering Hawaiian Culture-Based Education (HCBE) and TEK alongside scientific practices. These efforts emphasize relationships to ʻāina (land), language, and community as essential to long-term environmental stewardship.

Jachelle's project examines how these “braided” knowledge systems come together in everyday conservation work. Using interviews and participant-observation filmmaking, Jachelle is documenting the experiences of staff, interns, and community volunteers engaged in restoration projects and educational programs. The outcome of this summer’s research will be a collection of interviews and visual documentation that will serve as the foundation for a collaborative documentary project.

07/20/2026

Summer is an exciting time for our Environmental Humanities graduate students to dive into research and community engagement! 🌻

This summer, Rachel Kunselman is partnering with C 4Ever Green, a Diné-led environmental nonprofit, to support advocacy for expanded solid waste infrastructure for communities on the portion of the Navajo Nation that borders Utah. Currently, only 22 of the Navajo Nation's 110 chapters have solid waste transfer stations and none are located near the chapters that border Utah.

This summer, Rachel can be found attending community meetings, assisting C 4Ever Green with grant writing, and investigating federal and state policies related to solid waste management. In this picture, Rachel and another volunteer from the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance are making frybread to share at trash pick-up event hosted by C 4Ever Green. Yummy!