Indian Ridge Marsh, Chicago, IL
08/2024: Published with Maddie, Jesse, and Pete, Find Ch 6. of the special issue "Finding Fields" here, and the rest of the spectacular research in this issue of Archeological Papers of the AAA, here. We did some fun fieldwork, groundtruthing lidar and historic aerial photos to uncover intact Native American-constructed ridged agricultural beds, near known cultural mounds. They are a sight to see!
08/2022: Presented pilot data from our slag research at Ecological Society of America - in Montreal!
07/2022: Appointed to the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization at UChicago.
02/2022: Spoke to UChicago's Environmental Research Group about urban greenspace.
02/2022: Published in Restoration Ecology with collaborators Lauren Umek and Laura Merwin: slag is cool!
01/2022: Interviewed by PGE student Hannah Wilson-Black about the Calumet Quarter.
01/2022: Named a Fellow in the inaugural Faculty Pedagogy Fellows program at UChicago.
12/2021: Taught Urban Ecology in the Great Nearby and students made badass final projects.
10/2021: Collaborator Maddie McLeester presented pilot results of Wisconsin fields research at the Midwest Archaeology Conference.
10/2021: Led Chicago Studies Urban Hike to Beaubien Woods.
08/2021: Fieldwork on the Wisconsin fields project with collaborators Maddie McLeester, Jeff Grignon and Pete Geraci. Honored to visit and hold space in sacred places on Menominee land.
06-08/2021: Mentored student research assistants for tree ecosystem services project for EF Campus.
04/2021: In celebration of Earth Day, had a discussion with conservation ecologist Erika Hasle about the Field Museum's Monarch Butterfly community science program.
02/2021: With Lauren Umek, led discussion on restoration potential of slag at Calumet Restoration Roundtable.
11/2020: Featured along with Chicago's urban ecology in Medicine on the Midway!
11/2020: Served on the review board for the inaugural distribution of Green Fund grants to University of Chicago students.
10/2020: Joined the advisory board for The Nature Conservancy's Chicago Biodiversity project.
07/2020: With collaborators, and field assistants, pursued an abbreviated field season at Big Marsh, setting up plots for long term monitoring of plant community composition on slag.
02/2020: Joined Nootan Bharani and Luke Joyner at a Research Roundtable for Chicago Studies featuring the theme of Connectivity.
12/2019: With Hengxing as the first author, we published our first work on slag vegetation in PLoS One, "Early succession on slag compared to urban soil: a slower recovery"!
08/2019: Undergraduate advisee Hengxing Zou (who starts his PhD training at Rice University this fall!) presented our research, in collaboration with Cathy Pfister, at ESA in Louisville, KY.
SU 2019: Joined the Galapagos Urbanization Trip with Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation and Program on the Global Environment. Find updates via Twitter from MI and PGE or the hashtag #UChicagoGalapagos.
06/2019: Was awarded the 2018-19 Faculty Community Impact Award from University of Chicago University Community Service Center.
06/2019: Featured on WBEZ's Curious City after posing the question: How is Chicago doing on its ambitious 2020 climate goals? Read more here. Listen to the podcast here.