Mary Jackson, PhD
Associate Faculty
She/Her
Mary A. Jackson, Ph.D. I am an interdisciplinary qualitative researcher emphasizing environmental humanities, sustainability, and new materialist methodologies. My work examines more-than-human agency through an embodied awareness of place, confronting anthropogenic and colonizing narratives. My research interests include nature-culture relationships and Nepal and Himalayan studies through which I explore theoretical approaches of new materialist and posthumanist methodologies. As an outdoor educator, I was lucky to see the world many times over through my work in the field on four continents, from the Himalayas to the Amazon. I aim to empower students through experiential learning to reconfigure outdoor education for the 21st century. I earned my Ph.D. in Sustainability Education and MA in Adventure Education from Prescott College. My doctoral dissertation examined place in the context of adventure trekking tourism in the upper Solukhumbu District, Nepal, through a walking topographic ethnography of the trails in and around Mount Everest base camp, engaging in theoretical frameworks of new materialism. I earned my BFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. As a visual artist, I paint abstract concepts of embodied experiences in oil or watercolor, linking to my academic research on place, meaning, and agency. http://www.maryajackson.com/