Cultural Anthropology Ph.D.
BRIANNA L. MEYER
INVOLVEMENT
Edge Effects
Bri has been an editor for Edge Effects since Spring 2021 and now serves as the Managing Editor. Edge Effects is a digital magazine sponsored by the Center for Culture, History, & Environment, a division of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison. The magazine publishes weekly public-facing essays and podcasts on the themes of the environment broadly construed, especially concerning environmental justice through community-based research. Focusing on multispecies pieces, Bri has worked with numerous contributors to produce writing and podcasts that transform academic research into accessible knowledge.
CHE
UW-Madison's Center for Culture, History, & Environment (CHE) is at the forefront of some of the most exciting environmental humanities and social science scholarship focusing on the entangled histories of nature and culture. CHE facilitates interdisciplinary environmental research, learning, and service aimed at advancing understanding of environmental change within historical, social, and/or cultural contexts.
Bri is a CHE Ph.D. minor and has been a graduate associate since 2018. Throughout her tenure, Bri has served on the Graduate Associate Organizing Committee (2023-24), helped plan, design for, and facilitate yearly symposia (2021-24), was graduate co-organizer and graphic designer for the 2020 International Conference "Environmental Justice in Multispecies Worlds," has presented at multiple annual meetings on various themes (2019, 2020, 2021, 2024), and has attended a multi-day Place-Based workshop on Changing Landscapes of Indigeneity (2019).
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CHE has become a second home for Bri at UW-Madison, as it allows her to pursue multispecies ethnography with an interdisciplinary approach. Through her connections at CHE, she has gained demonstrable environmental studies knowledge and experience, networking connections, and administrative leadership.
Program design for the 2020 CHE co-sponsored conference.
Land Grant Reading Group
In conjunction with University of Kentucky's Dimensions of Political Ecology (DOPE), Bri was on the steering committee for a graduate student-led reading/working group on the past, present, and future of land-grant universities. UW-Madison and U. Kentucky share histories as land-grant universities founded on teaching settler-colonial agriculture. The Morrill Act of 1860 allowed both institutions to "grab" (steal) land—for UW, Ho-Chunk, for U. Kentucky, primarily Shawnee—to do so.
What are ways that we as current students can better understand these histories in the present, and plan for more equitable futures at our institutions? Which issues do Wisconsin and Kentucky share, and which are unique to each place? What are hands-on, ethnographic ways that students and faculty can learn about the relationship between the land-grant and Indigenous communities?
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In addition to organizing the topics and discussions, Bri designed all of the website, social media, and email material for the project.
Teaching Academy
The UW-Madison Teaching Academy was established in 1993 by the Faculty Senate to gather together scholars who demonstrated excellence in teaching and learning at a research university. The mission of the Academy is to promote, recognize, and support excellence in teaching and learning among faculty, staff, and students across campus and beyond.
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The anthropology faculty nominated Bri for Future Faculty Partner (FFP) status in the Academy, and she was inducted in Spring 2020. She served on the FFP Committee to plan activities and recruit other graduate students, as well as the Retreat Planning Committee, which includes organizing and facilitating teaching workshops each semester. She was nominated for and elected to the Academy's Executive Board as an FFP from Fall 2021-Fall 2022.
Panels Moderated & Conferences Organized
2024
2022
2022
2022
2021
2021
2020
Co-organizer, “Mutation/Adaptation,” Center for Culture, History, & Environment Symposium, UW-Madison, March 9.
Co-organizer & moderator, “Care & Precarity,” Ethics of Care Initiative discussion, UW-Madison, April 30.
Moderator, “A Conversation with Joan Tronto,” Ethics of Care Initiative discussion, UW-Madison, April 26 [virtual].
Co-organizer & graphic designer, “Re-/Generation,” Center for Culture, History, & Environment Symposium, UW-Madison, March 5 [virtual].
Co-founder, co-organizer, & graphic designer, “So You Want to Talk About Land Theft Universities,” Center for Culture, History, & Environment, UW-Madison, in collaboration with Dimensions of Political Ecology, University of Kentucky, ongoing reading group September-May 2022 [virtual].
Panel moderator, “Relations of Care Across and After Worlds Conference,” panel “Ecologies of More Than Human Care,” Ethics of Care Initiative, UW-Madison, May 13-14 [virtual].
Graduate co-organizer & graphic designer, “Environmental Justice in Multispecies Worlds,” Center for Culture, History, & Environment international conference, UW-Madison, March 6-8.