Current Fellow
Robin Wall Kimmerer
The 2024 Richman Distinguished Fellow in Public Life is Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Photo Credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. She is the author of the critically acclaimed “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants,” and “Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses,” which was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing in 2005.
In 2015, Kimmerer addressed the general assembly of the United Nations on the topic of “Healing Our Relationship with Nature.” In 2022, she was named a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow.
Kimmerer was nominated by Associate Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies Colleen Hitchcock. In her nomination, Hitchcock said that Kimmerer's selection would be a fitting following act to Brandeis’ Year of Climate Action. Her nomination received broad faculty support across disciplines in the sciences and humanities.
As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. She holds a BS in Botany from SUNY ESF, an MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, traditional knowledge and restoration ecology. As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild.
Kimmerer was in residence Feb. 28-29, 2024. The Richman award ceremony and presentation was held on Feb. 28 at 4:30 p.m.
Videos
Watch: "Restoration and Reciprocity: Healing Relationships With the Natural World" (Login required)
Robin Wall Kimmerer in conversation with Colleen Hitchcock, Associate Professor of Ecology, Feb. 29, 2024