University of Utah Environmental Humanities Graduate Program

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.

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.

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.

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

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)!

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.

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.

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!

✨ Join us for an inspiring evening with Olivia Juarez, Spring 2026 Environmental Humanities Community Practitioner-in-Residence, as they share their community-engaged research highlighting Hispanic & Latine heritage in the Central Wasatch of the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest.

📍 Glendale Branch Library, 1375 Concord St. (Meeting Rooms A & B)
🅿️ Free parking available
🌮 Enjoy delicious bites from La Ilegal Catering, including skewers de pollo & hongos with mole de pipián + refreshing agua de jamaica!

Come learn how storytelling, public lands, and environmental justice intersect—and how community voices shape the narratives of our region. Olivia Juarez is a lifelong Utahn and Public Land Program Director for GreenLatinos, a national nonprofit envisioning “a thriving and equitable society where historically overburdened communities and future generations are able to enjoy a renewed and protected ecosystem, liberated from disproportionate environmental injustices.”

This event is part of the Environmental Humanities Community Practitioner-in-Residence program at the University of Utah.

🔗 RSVP: https://tinyurl.com/olivia-juarez.