Karen Hébert

Biography

My research examines changing natural resource economies, environmental politics, and struggles over sustainability in the subarctic and circumpolar North. An ethnographer by training, I work at the intersection of critical human geography, cultural anthropology, and political ecology, contributing to cross-disciplinary conversations in environmental studies and science studies. I have conducted long-term fieldwork in Alaska, primarily in the Bristol Bay region of southwestern Alaska. My first major research project focused on historical and recent transformations in the Alaska salmon industry. In recent years, I have explored how the experience of living in an environment “at risk” shapes livelihoods and resource politics across coastal Alaska. In collaboration with Carleton University faculty member Danielle DiNovelli-Lang and a student research team, I have followed the activities of scientists, activists, government officials, and rural residents in two different Alaskan regions to analyze the shifting nature of resource development debates involving mining, logging, and fishing. Before joining Carleton in 2016, I was jointly appointed as an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. I have been a scholar in residence at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a postdoctoral fellow in the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale. I hold a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan and a BA in Humanities from Yale.

Research Interest

human geography, cultural anthropology, and political ecology