Title: Cecil D. Andrus Endowed Chair for the Environment and Public Lands and Professor of History
Institution: Boise State University
Address: 1910 W University Dr MS 1935, Boise, Idaho 83725
Email: emilywakild@boisestate.edu
Phone: (208) 426-2549
Visit Emily’s Research Website
Research Interests: nature conservation, place-based pedagogy, animal history (beavers, wolves, llamas), human dimensions of biodiversity conservation and loss, history of scientific approaches to restoration
Biographical Sketch:
Emily Wakild is the Cecil D. Andrus Endowed Chair for the Environment and Public Lands at Boise State University. She directed the Environmental Studies program from 2018-2023. Her first monograph, Revolutionary Parks: Conservation, Social Justice, and Mexico’s National Parks (University of Arizona Press, 2011) examines the creation of national parks during Mexico’s social revolution. She co-authored a book on teaching with Michelle K. Berry called A Primer for Teaching Environmental History (Duke, 2018). Both are available in Spanish translations. Her academic work has earned grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the Fulbright-Hays program.
Wakild’s research tries to account for the ways various American societies have deliberately conserved—or chosen not to exploit—nature in different times and places. Why did some of the most unequal and diverse societies in the world find space in their political agendas to create national parks? What did conservation mean for humans, animals, and the larger social and environmental changes of the twentieth century? Rather than center conventional or critical interpretations of nature conservation, Wakild shows how the creation of national parks proved a moderating force that pulled different groups together, time and again. By elaborating on the patterns and processes that these countries used to protect large landscapes, Wakild provides a bold new interpretation of national parks.
She is currently the PI on a $496,914 NSF-Innovations in Graduate Education grant to study the effectiveness of place-based education as a way to confront challenges in contemporary environmental management. Entitled PLACE: Partnerships for Learning through Academic and Community Engagement, this project aims to study the role of experiential learning in enhancing the persistence, satisfaction, and placement of graduate students from interdisciplinary graduate degree programs in public lands and environmental management careers.
Education:
Ph.D./M.A. University of Arizona, Tucson, May 2007 (2004), History
Teaching Certificate University of Texas Pan-American, Edinburg, Texas May 2001
B.A. Willamette University, Oregon, May 1999, cum laude, History and Politics; Spanish