Casey Gallagher is a 2024 UC Santa Barbara graduate with a bachelor of arts degree in environmental studies and a minor degree in comparative literature. She earned distinction in the major and the Distinguished Senior Thesis Award after completing a year-long senior thesis in which she examined how environmental rhetoric associated with “Big Oil” has shifted from 1968 to 2024, and how this has impacted American environmental views and practices. Her research interests include environmental justice, religion and nature, urban infrastructure, and Southern California tide pool ecology.

Yalda Khodadad graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 2023 with a bachelor of arts degree in environmental studies and an emphasis in geography. Her short story, “The Lepidopteral Blessing,” received the Keith Vineyard Award from the English Department at UCSB. Her senior thesis, “The Eucalyptus Curtain,” which focused on the intersection between cultural perceptions of invasivity and immigration through the lens of Eucalyptus trees in California and beyond, was honored with the Distinguished Senior Thesis Award. Their interests also include cultural geography, environmental justice, science communication, creative writing, and native Californian ecology.

Lisa H. Sideris is professor in the Environmental Studies Program at the UC Santa Barbara, with affiliation in the Religious Studies Department. Dr. Sideris’s research focuses on the ethical and spiritual significance of nature and natural processes and how “environmental” values may be captured or obscured by perspectives from religion and the sciences. Wonder is a frequent theme in her writing. She is the author of Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection (Columbia University Press, 2003) and Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World (University of California Press, 2017). Sideris is also co-editor of an interdisciplinary collection of essays on the life and work of Rachel Carson, titled Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge (SUNY Press, 2008).