List of Presenters

She/Her/Hers

Tianna Bruno is a Provost’s Early Career Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on the intersection of Black geographies, critical environmental justice, and critical physical geography.  Through her work, she aims to foreground Black life, sense of place, and relationships to the environment within spaces of present-day environmental injustice. Her research also highlights the mutual experiences of degradation and survival between Black communities and their surrounding ecologies through the integration of Black geographies and dendrochronology. This research is currently focused on Texas, and will soon expand to various locations across the Black diaspora.

He/Him/His

Bilal Butt is an Associate Professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. His research is concerned with understanding the drivers and effects of violent conflicts over natural resources. He places a large emphasis on empirical fieldwork to understand the lived geographies of the interactions between people and the environment in ecologically heterogeneous regions. He combines various geospatial technologies with historical and ecological dynamics of dryland environments to understand how differential power relations between agencies, states, and other actors come together to influence the etiology of resource conflicts. He is also interested in the ways that scientific and technical appraisals of indigenous peoples and environments have misread the landscape, leading to orientalist approaches to development programs. He has also had a long history of engagement on questions of environmental conflicts, particularly around wildlife poaching, land grabs, and green energy. Dr. Butt received the National Science Foundation Career Award and is a recipient of the Superior Teaching Award from the University of Michigan. He has published in diverse journals such as the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Remote Sensing of Environment, Journal of Applied Ecology and Humanity. He teaches courses on Conservation and Development, Political Ecology, Environmental Security and Conflict, Environmental Governance, and Preparing for International Fieldwork. 

Cara Clase is a Public Policy Ph.D. student at the University of Delaware.  She is a passionate energy justice advocate that centers her research around sustainable and equitable solutions to energy poverty in urban landscapes.  Cara actively supports sustainability initiatives at her University as the Chair of the Carbon Neutrality Subcommittee and spends her free time doing pro bono work for the medical nonprofit Foundation for a Healthier Senegal.  Inspired by her experience working at an energy justice nonprofit in Yale’s Environmental Fellowship Program, Cara aspires to pursue an academic career where her research can serve marginalized communities and provide policy-based solutions to end energy insecurity.  

She/Her/Hers

Fransha (pronounced ‘fran-SHĀ’) Dace, earned her bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science at Emory University and her master’s degree in Climate and Society at Columbia University. As a researcher at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Fransha deepened her interest in climate adaptation planning. The South Shore, Chicago native hopes to combine this interest with her passions for food security and environmental equity to build resilient communities domestically and internationally.