Research

Animals, Wilderness, and the Stories that Connect Us

My research sits at the intersection of historical geography and the environmental humanities. I study how animals, tourists, and technologies shape American ideas of wilderness, and how those ideas shape landscapes in return. My current work centers on the Adirondack Park, a six-million-acre experiment in keeping land "forever wild."

Animals & Wilderness

My dissertation, Forever Wild: A Cultural History of Adirondack Animals, examines how creatures at the margins, black flies and beavers among them, have defined Adirondack wilderness from the nineteenth century to the present. This work draws on my 2025–26 Peter C. Welsh Research Fellowship at the Adirondack Experience. An article from this project, "Performing Wilderness: Black Flies and the Intimate Geographies of Adirondack Authenticity," is under review at the Journal of Historical Geography.

Tourism, Recreation & Place

The theme unifying my research locations, the Adirondacks and coastal New England, is the vital role recreation and tourism play in their cultures, histories, and economies. My dissertation argues that cultural conflicts are resolved in arenas of recreation and leisure. I have researched how COVID-19 reshaped tourism and recreational boating. Questions of access, authenticity, and who belongs in "wild" places run through all of my work on recreation.

AI & the Environmental Humanities

I write about what AI means for how we research, teach, and think in the environmental humanities, with work accepted at Resistance and under review at the Journal of Geography in Higher Education. I treat AI as a critical threat to pedagogy and the humanities, but also as a transformative technology that we must be able to both critique and engage thoughtfully and holistically.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

• "Creative Practice and Spatial Storytelling in the Cartographic Classroom," with Yoxall, Kelly, Kline, Montgomery, Vazquez-Carrillo, and Brown. Cartographic Perspectives, forthcoming 2026.
• "The Environmental Humanities in the Age of AI." Resistance: A Journal of Radical Environmental Humanities, forthcoming 2027.
• "Performing Wilderness: Black Flies and the Intimate Geographies of Adirondack Authenticity." Under review
• "Teaching with AI, Teaching Against AI." Under review

Invited Talks

• "Performing Wilderness: Black Flies and the Intimate Geographies of Adirondack Authenticity." Huntington Lecture Series, SUNY ESF, Newcomb, NY. August 2026.

Conference Presentations

• "Environmental History in the Age of AI." American Society for Environmental History, Kansas City, MO. 2026.
• "Higher Education in the Age of LLMs." American Association of Geographers, San Francisco, CA. 2026.
• "Mapping Forever Wild: Animals and Recreation in the Adirondacks." National Environment and Recreation Research Symposium, Annapolis, MD. 2024.
• "Tradition, Opportunity, and Viral Illness: How the Onset of COVID-19 Reshaped Coastal Tourism in New England." National Environment and Recreation Research Symposium, Annapolis, MD. 2023.

Public Writing & Reviews

• "Bug Off: Duflo, Dope, and the Adirondack Fight to Control Pest Control." Adirondack Experience Newsletter, Winter/Spring 2026.
• Review of Outsider Animals. H-Net, 2026.
• Review of Heppler, Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism. H-Net, 2026.
• Review of What If We Get It Right. Gulf of Maine Institute Journal, 2025.
• "Nautical Newcomers: How the Pandemic Has Changed Recreational Boating." Currents, 2022.