Gender, Environment, and Crisis

“Gender, Environment, and Crisis” is a panel that is part of a day of events with a focus on these themes. This panel brings together Ebony Griffin (Public Interest Law Center), Dr. Nicole Seymour (California State University, Fullerton), Dr. Katera Moore (Center for Black Educators Development), and Xiye Bastida-Patrick (University of Pennsylvania), moderated by Dr. Akira Drake Rodriguez (University of Pennsylvania). This event is sponsored by the Weitzman School of Design, the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies program and the Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. 

This event is part of the series Transdisciplinary Urbanism in Times of Precarity, which emphasizes that times of crisis and precarity produce challenges to urban space, processes, and infrastructure that mirror and often heighten changing realities.

Ebony H. Griffin is the staff attorney of environmental justice at the Public Interest Law Center. Ms. Griffin has extensive experience in the field of environmental law. In law school she worked as a summer law clerk for the White House Council on Environmental Quality and also spent five months clerking for the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance at the Environmental Protection Agency. After law school Ms. Griffin clerked for the Honorable Judge Zoe Bush of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia for one year. After clerking for Judge Bush, Ms. Griffin spent several years working as an environmental and safety regulatory associate at Enhesa Inc. in Washington DC. . Griffin focuses on projects that support low-income, historically disinvested communities and communities of color in advocating effectively for sustainable and equitable neighborhoods. Her current work includes the Eastwick Advocacy and Community Development project, the Garden Justice Legal Initiative, and our lawsuit to preserve the La Finquita Community Farm. Ms. Griffin is a graduate of Howard University School of Law and received her Bachelor of the Arts degree in Spanish from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Dr. Nicole Seymour (she/her/hers) researches the roles that queer styles and affects play in environmental movements, with publications such as Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) and Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination (University of Illinois Press, 2013). Dr. Seymour is Associate Professor of English at California State University, Fullerton, where she also serves as the Graduate Advisor for the Environmental Studies Program. She is also co-curator for NXTerra, an open-access repository of climate pedagogy materials developed by faculty across the California State University and University of California systems. Currently Dr. Seymour is an Environmental Humanities Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, finishing a public-facing book about glitter--its typical microplastic form as well as biodegradable alternatives--for Bloomsbury’s “Object Lessons” series.

Dr. Katera Moore is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Unity College. She is passionate about place-based change. She believes that small local changes can make a big cumulative difference thus she is committed to teaching students the value of authentic community engagement. She has had a wide range of experience in leadership roles to diligently work to create a stronger, healthier community. She previously served as the Director of the Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative at Penn where she built collaborative partnerships to address community public health, a symptom of broader environmental injustice. In this role, she created research opportunities for students to engage in community action research. She is a champion for K12 urban education and is currently engaged with The Center for Black Educator Development. 

Xiye Bastida is a Mexican-Chilean climate activist and member of the indigenous Mexican Otomi-Toltec nation. Bastida was awarded the “Spirit of the UN” award in 2018 and led her high school, The Beacon School,  in the first major climate strike in New York City in March 2019. She is one of the major organizers of Fridays for Future New York City and has been a leading voice for indigenous and immigrant visibility in climate activism. She is on the administration committee of the People's Climate Movement and a member of Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion. She is co-founder of Re-Earth Initiative, an international non for profit organization that is inclusive and intersectional “just as the climate movement should be.”

Transdisciplinary Urbanism in Times of Precarity
Advisory Committee:
Akira Drake Rodriquez
Erin Cross
Kareli Lizárraga
Krista Cortes
with Oluwatosin Omojola

If you require any accessibility accommodation, such as live captioning, audio description, or a sign language interpreter, please email news@design.upenn.edu to let us know what you need. Please note, we require at least 48 hours’ notice. If you register within 48 hours of this event, we won’t be able to secure the appropriate accommodations.