University of Wisconsin-Madison

Graduate Student, Anthropology

Thesis Title: Multinatural Resources: Conceptions of Energy and Economies of Knowledge in Alaska

About

I study conceptions of energy and how those conceptions animate conflict over development in central Alaska. To understand these conceptions in social and historical context, I take a critical ethnographic approach to practices related to the production of fossil and alternative energy. Knowledge and experience of energy in resource frontiers, whether in fossil fuel extractive work or grassroots renewable fuel activism, are ciphers of social power and sites of everyday experience and livelihood. My dissertation project aims to relate the deployment of such knowledge to ontological regimes. My orientations are in Northern studies, American Indian, Alaska Native, and global indigenous studies, resource geography, environmental anthropology, ontological anthropology, and political ecology.