Hi! I am Lauren Wheeler, a history PhD student at the University of Alberta. My research is broadly interested in questions of how environment and environmental change influence human actions. This is currently expressed through a dissertation on environmental advocacy and activism in Alberta and British Columbia universities from the 1960s through the 1990s. This is a bit of a stretch from my public history MA work Carleton University, which was on public, private and archival representations of winter in Banff, Alberta in the 1920s. I also have a tangential interest in cultural constructions of the Rocky Mountain environment – which is the loose connection between my masters and doctoral work.
This blog is part of trying to stay sane during comps, researching, writing, presenting and publishing. Edmonton is pretty remote and as the only Canadian environmental historian getting ready for comps in my department it can be isolating reading all the time and having no one to bounce ideas off. Most of what I post is about the massive pile of readings I have to get through and the research I’m working on. There is the occasional just for fun post and some reading reflections will digress into rants but that is all part of the process. For a more detailed description of my doctoral work see my NiCHE New Scholars profile.
Enjoy and feel free to disagree – it is through debate that new ideas emerge and we move forward.
-L
