Mary Jackson, PhD

Mary A. Jackson, Ph.D., is an interdisciplinary researcher, outdoor educator, and artist, with a focus on environmental humanities, sustainability, and new materialist methodologies. Her work explores more-than-human agency through an embodied awareness of place, challenging both anthropogenic and colonizing narratives. After completing her Ph.D. in Sustainability Education at Prescott College in 2017, she has concentrated on developing both her visual art and narrative research, examining agency and more-than-human landscapes in the Anthropocene.

Her dissertation, “Process and Emergence: A Topographic Ethnography of the Embodiment of Place and Adventure Tourism in Khumbu, Nepal”, used post-qualitative methodologies to explore how place, meaning, and agency evolve in relation to adventure tourism experiences in the Himalaya.

Mary’s current research focuses on the meaning and embodiment of place and disability through the theoretical lens of new materialist and posthumanist methodologies. She integrates the creative process into her research methods, using visual ethnography (photography and drawing) and written vignettes to develop tools for understanding the relationships between humans and more-than-humans in specific places.

Her recent publications include “Embodiment and More-Than-Human Topographies: A Praxis Tool for Reconfiguring Sense of Place in the Anthropocene in Online and Limited-Residency Higher Education,” which frames the theoretical foundations and practical steps for ecological literacies for outdoor educators. She also recently published “Reconfiguring Cartesian Dualism through Pain and Place in a Disabled Body: A Personal Case Study on the Meaning of Adventure and the Outdoors,” which explores through autoethnography the relationship between disability and outdoor experiences.

Mary’s experience in outdoor and adventure education spans four continents, including jungles, deserts, and high peaks around the world; however, she calls Colorado home.