Jessica Pouchet

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies & Sciences
Affiliated Faculty in Critical Black Studies

Education

  • Ph.D., Northwestern University, Anthropology
  • M.A., Northwestern University, Anthropology
  • A.B., Brown University International Relations

Faculty Research Interests

Jessica Pouchet is a sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist whose research explores the intersection of language and the environment.

Her current book project examines the ways in which people who live on the borders of a protected forest in Tanzania negotiate environmental value and participate in conservation. This primarily ethnographic project incorporates spatial and archival data to illustrate the challenging circumstances that people who live next to protected areas face as well as the discursive strategies they employ to navigate those circumstances. The book and associated articles emphasize the coloniality of conservation, structural inequalities, and the political possibilities of everyday actions.

Pouchet’s research has been supported by several organizations, including the National Science Foundation, The Wenner-Gren Foundation, and Fulbright-Hays.

Prior to pursuing research in Tanzania, Pouchet conducted research on sustainability and desert agriculture in Egypt with the American University in Cairo, worked at an international development organization in Washington, D.C., and served as a reporter at The Trinidad Guardian in Trinidad & Tobago. She was also a member of Trinidad & Tobago’s inaugural national gymnastics team.

Pouchet’s second research project explores inclusivity and justice in outdoor recreation, paying special attention to the ways minoritized mountain athletes create space for themselves in activities and places built on their exclusion. The project has a particular focus on climbers of color like herself and the way athlete-activists pursue radical joy, healing, and decolonized relationships to the environment and one another.

Recent and Representative Publications

2022 Pouchet, J. “Negotiating Expendability in Crisis: Conservation and Biopolitics in Tanzania.” American Ethnologist. 49(1):50-63

2022 Pouchet, J. “A Double Standard in Development Encounters: Creativity, Conformity, and the Quest for Green Entrepreneurship.” Anthropological Quarterly 95(1):65-96.

2021 Pouchet, J. “Participation, Inequality, and Conversations about Conservation.” Journal of Sociolinguistics. 25(3):474-477

2020 Pouchet, J. “The Circulation, Durability, and Erasure of Brands in a Biodiversity Hotspot.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 30(2): 213-232.

Recent Courses Taught

  • Diversity in the Great Outdoors
  • Identity, Inequality, and the Environment
  • Language and Environmental Politics
  • Community-based Research Design
  • Conservation in Africa
  • Environmental Ethnography

Awards and Honors

  • C. Graydon and Mary E. Rogers Faculty Fellow
  • AMGA (American Mountain Guide Association) certified single pitch instructor (SPI)
  • Wilderness First Responder (WFR)

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