Meet the Mellon Fellows: Dr. Lisa Fink

Dr. Lisa Fink

University of Oregon
PhD, Environmental Sciences, Studies, and Policy

Host Site: Alaska Regional Interpretation Team
Fellowship Title: Identifying Connections Between Indigenous Knowledge and Scientific Results Fellowship
Project Description: Dr. Fink will transform interpretation through researching Indigenous Knowledge, cultural practices, and meaning correlated with peer-reviewed science of natural resource topics in Alaska’s National Parks. They will develop trainings for interpreters as well as new comprehensive interpretive products that ensure deeper and expanded storytelling.

Bio:

Dr. Lisa Fink completed their PhD in Environmental Sciences, Studies, and Policy, and English at the University of Oregon. Their research and teaching explore human-nature and human-animal interaction at the nexus of US racial formation, settler colonialism, and environmental change. Their current book project investigates racial and colonial discourses of invasion applied at once to species and human immigrants; counter-narratives in Asian American, Arab American, and Indigenous literatures; and Indigenous knowledges and practices concerning species considered invasive. Dr. Fink's public humanities work with the group Just Language for Ecology Education brings this research to community environmental educators and practitioners of restoration ecology. Dr. Fink is the recipient of a Lokey Doctoral Science Fellowship, Oregon Humanities Center Dissertation Fellowship, Sandra Morgen Public Impact Fellowship, and Fulbright Fellowship (Mongolia, 2006), among other honors. Their scholarly writing has been published or is forthcoming in American Quarterly, Humanities, and ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. Author of the poetry chapbook Her Disco (dancing girl press, 2013), they have also completed an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of Virginia, and their poetry has been published widely in journals such as Boston Review, Ecotone, and [PANK].

Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

This project was made possible through the National Park Service by a grant from the National Park Foundation through generous support from the Mellon Foundation. The Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship program is administered through a partnership between NPS, NPF, and American Conservation Experience.