Organizers

Michael Del Vecchio – University of Western Ontario

Michael Del Vecchio is a first year doctoral candidate at the University of Western Ontario.  Although his home department is History, Michael is enrolled in UWO’s Environment and Sustainability Collaborative Research Program providing him an interdisciplinary foundation for his research.  Michael’s experience as a fishing guide in northwestern Ontario has inspired his research into angling (recreational fishing) and aquaculture (fish stocking) in twentieth century Ontario.

Andrew Watson – York University

Andrew Watson is in the fourth year of his PhD at York University. His dissertation is a study of how changes to the societal metabolism of the Muskoka Lakes region north of Toronto shaped sustainability between 1850 and 1920. Other research interests include landscape change, mobility, energy technologies and fuel, and post apocalyptic literature.

Jim Clifford – NiCHE

Jim Clifford completed his PhD in the history department at York University in early 2011. He is interested in the social and environmental consequences of rapid urbanization in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain. Jim’s dissertation is entitled “A Wetland Suburb on the Edge of London: a Social and Environmental History of West Ham and the River Lea, 1855-1914.” Jim works for NiCHE as a website and project coordinator and is an editor of ActiveHistory.ca.

Jennifer Lee Johnson – University of Michigan

Jennifer is a Ph.D. Candidate in SNRE’s Resource Policy and Behavior program studying the political ecology of globally-integrated artisanal and small-scale fisheries. Her primary research employs interdisciplinary theory and methodology from environmental history, anthropology, geography and fisheries science to examine social-ecological adaptation in eastern Africa’s Lake Victoria. As a Research Fellow with SNRE’s Ecosystem Management Initiative, Jennifer also conducts in-depth case study research and cross-case analysis of marine ecosystem-based management projects around the globe. Before and during graduate school Jennifer has worked professionally on fisheries issues for the Marine Fish Conservation Network, NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory and the Blue Ocean Institute. She holds a BA in International Political Economy from the Colorado College and an MS in Environmental Policy and Planning from SNRE. When not immersed in scholarly literature, archives or fish guts, Jennifer co-hosts It’s Hot in Here on 88.3 WCBN-FM-Ann Arbor (www.wcbn.org/hotinhere).

Jessica C. Marx – Lund University

Jessica C. Marx is a M.Sc. Candidate in Human Ecology: Culture, Power, and Sustainability at Lund University in Sweden.  Her master’s thesis examines forestry and narratives of ecology in Israel and Palestine, in particular the role of the Jewish National Fund in constructing the nation-state through the production of forests, which planted the roots of the Jewish state both materially and ideologically.  Other research interests include political ecology, the world food system, power, and environmental history.  For the past six months, Jessica has been working with Friends of the Earth Middle East in Tel Aviv as a research intern focusing on environmental peacemaking and water politics.

Bradley Skopyk – National Autonomous University of Mexico

Bradley Skopyk is carrying out post-doctoral research in Mexico City at the Institute for Anthropological Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He is working with archaeologists, anthropologists and historians to unravel the environmental history of the Valley of Teotihuacan (north-east of Mexico City) over more than a thousand year period. He is interested in how indigenous farmers responded to Spanish colonialism and, as a result, how they remade local environments. Such interests link issues such as political power, agrarian innovation, energetics, climate change, soil degradation and how memories of past places shift to make sense of environment change.