Meet our team….
We identify as feminist scholars from the margins and warrior teachers. We embody our diverse queer and multicultural identities across each of our unique scholarships and practices. We are all doing deeply personal work that honors our own lived experiences and the communities we hold close to our hearts, but we do not do this work alone.
Dr. Anna Lavoie (she/ela)
Assistant Professor, Human Dimensions of Natural Resources
My expertise spans ecology and social sciences with a focus on human-environment relationships, environmental conservation and governance, and gendered livelihoods. I have almost 20 years of experience in environmental conservation and natural resource management and have worked for NGOs and government. My work highlights the roles and knowledge of women in small-scale fisheries in Brazil and Alaska, showing how management and policy excludes women. I aim to contribute to conservation stewardship for land and livelihood sovereignty, and access and rights to natural resources of historically marginalized peoples. Land and livelihood sovereignty are deeply rooted in my work as my mother and father lived from and with their lands, which have been designated as the Cassurubá Extractive Reserve in Brazil, and the Graciosa Island Biosphere Reserve of the Azores because of their biodiversity and cultural values. My parents immigrated to Massachusetts in the late 1950s, and my mother later returned to her homeland in Bahia where I frequented, thus my positionality draws heavily from her embodied upbringing and life in Bahian (Afro-Indigenous) culture and, why I cannot unsee decolonization and abolition as intertwined. I also identify with Northern Indigenous culture and spirituality from my younger years as a mentee to an adopted son, Black Eagle, of the Santee Sioux Indian Nations. I am a first generation holder of a Ph.D. in Geography and M.S and B.S degrees in Biology.
Erin Weingarten (they/them)
Ph.D. Candidate, Human Dimensions of Natural Resources
I approach my work through a decolonial feminist lens, leveraging and questionings my identities as a white-bodied, queer, Jewish, neurodivergent, non-binary individual. I’ve spent most of the last decade working in conservation spaces. Inspired by decolonial and queer feminist scholars, my current focus seeks to 1) Address systemic racism in conservation education and assess strategies and pedagogies to promote a liberatory, justice-informed praxis and 2) examine personal and community-oriented pathways of moving through embodied white supremacy culture and towards a reconnection to land, body, relationality, and spirit. As an integral part of this work, I am constantly moving through my own unconscious embodiment of white supremacy culture. This includes aspects such as a lack of relationality in the pursuit of individualism, a need for speed that leaves people behind, and a paternalistic perfectionism that has historically defined projects and controlled narratives. I work to keep humility close to my chest and approach my life with a reflexive eye, considering context, power dynamics, and privilege to inform my process of lifelong learning. I also love playing music with my friends, playing with paints, and running with my crazy dog in my free time.
Beth Wittmann (she/them)
Ph.D. Candidate, Biology Department
Beth Wittmann is a critical environmental historian invested in fat and disability liberation whose research interests center around social and historical constructions of “health” and “nature.” She takes a critical lens to history to expose the ways fatphobia and ableism were built into natural spaces and how systems of oppression continue to create exclusionary outdoor experiences. They are also a co-instructor of the graduate seminar course Recognizing and Addressing Oppression in the Sciences which approaches equity issues in STEM from a systemic lens. The course covers topics such as the history of eugenics in America, ecofascism, the politics and expansive biology of sex/gender, medical racism, anti-fat bias, and Western science as a tool of colonialism. Beth became a nature person growing up in the deciduous forests of Scranton, PA, a herpetologist in the lakes and mountains of Burlington, VT, and the person they are now in the social justice community of Fort Collins, CO. Inclusivity in field work, reading in the sun, poetry, art, family, and giving little gifts out of the blue are all very important to her.
Gemara Gifford (she/her)
Ph.D. Candidate, Human Dimensions of Natural Resources
Gemara Gifford (pronounced JEM-uh-ruh) is a conservation practitioner and researcher with over a decade of experience in the environmental public sector. As a connector and bridge-builder, she has built partnerships with dozens of Indigenous and Native-led organizations and coalitions to support grassroots efforts in climate justice, cultural and natural resource protection, and fish and wildlife conservation. Gemara’s doctoral research focuses on Indigenous-led land stewardship efforts on public lands in the American West, including land returns, co-management, wildlife reintroductions, and more. She also explores rematriation as an Indigenous women-led movement, and traces her own family’s connections to the Southern Rocky Mountains and the ways that the settler-colonial violence of Manifest Destiny has had lasting spiritual and material affects on women, animals, and the land. Gem has been recognized as a National Science Foundation Fellow (2020-present), Gates Millennium Scholar (2008-2016), Affiliate Faculty Member at Colorado State University (2018-2020), and Co-Chair of the Next 100 Colorado Coalition (2023-present). Gem was raised in North Denver where her mother instilled in her a deep love for and responsibility to animals and the environment. Gem is also a musician, creative writer, and ceramic artist and lives in Fort Collins with her husband and many critters.
Feminist Earthways 