Jon Hallemeier and Cydney Seigerman represented HECLab at the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting in Washington DC.
Cydney gave a performance-based presentation on knowledge production and water management in Ceará, Brazil and an analysis of her presentation as part of qualitative research methods using multi-modal analysis and genre theory. 

Jon presented on the role of collaboration in shaping forested landscapes in the southern Appalachians.
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Great HECLab representation at the SfAAs! Don Nelson, Emily Horton, John McGreevy, and Jon Hallemeier presented research at the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, which was held this year in Portland, Oregon.
Don gave a talk on CZO research describing historical land cover evolution in South Carolina; Emily presented dissertation results exploring underappreciated narratives of artisanal fishing and how narratives shape policy; Jon presented preliminary analysis exploring collaborative politics and competing claims to collaboration in a national forest planning process; and John Ryan presented preliminary dissertation work.  

Cydney Seigerman and MFA candidate Alden DiCamillo (UGA) organized a public pop-up exhibition as the culmination of their project Exploring Research as Craft: A Workshop Series to Promote Cross-Discipline Communication by Examining Processes of Creating to Approach Questions. More than 50 members of the Athens community attended the three hour exhibition.

​Conceptualized and led by Cydney and Alden, Exploring Research as Craft brought together graduate students from across the UGA campus to collaboratively engage through craft, material meaning-making, and critical response. Students from the Odum School of Ecology, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, Warnell School of Forestry, the College of Environment and Design, and the Lamar Dodd School of Art participated in a three-part workshop series, developing creative projects based on their research, which were displayed at the pop-up gallery show at ATHICA. Cydney’s piece was a live performance entitled “Researcher reads scholarly articles at home/office,” which challenged the boundaries placed between work and home in the context of academic research.
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Exploring Research as Craft was supported by a grant from the Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE) and also supported by ATHICA: Athens Institute for Contemporary Art. ICE is an interdisciplinary initiative for advanced research in the arts at UGA. ATHICA is a non-profit gallery providing collaborative and community arts space within the Athens, Georgia community.

HECL PhD Candidate John Ryan McGreevy presented initial findings of his dissertation research with research assistant Elisson Adrien (Quisqueya University, Elon University alumnus) at the 30th annual Haitian Studies Association Conference in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Through analysis of focus groups and initial interviews, they have identified factors leading to hurricane vulnerability in different subgroups of farmers in Camp Perrin, Haiti. Their presentation also highlights the network of locally-led efforts to provide emergency shelter to those who lost their homes in Hurricane Matthew. John Ryan will use surveys, in-depth interviews, and satellite image analysis to further test these findings and how they relate to the drought that immediately followed Hurricane Matthew in 2016, informing understanding of multiple disasters occurring in quick succession. ​

John Ryan McGreevy received the Boren Fellowship to conduct dissertation research in Haiti and study Haitian Creole, the only language spoken by the vast majority of Haiti’s rural poor. The National Security Education Program started the Boren Fellowship initiative to promote learning of lesser studied languages and to prepare Fellows for service in the United States Government. In June, John Ryan travelled to Washington D.C. for training at the Boren Awards Convocation. In the coming year, he will conduct mixed methods research on disaster vulnerability and tree use in Haiti’s Southern Peninsula, which is still recovering from Hurricane Matthew’s devastation in 2016. After degree completion, John Ryan hopes to spend his required year of government service working for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
 Read more about John Ryan and his work at the UGA Honors Program spotlight here (https://honors.uga.edu/news/s_p/boren/mcgreevy.html).
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HECL Lab student John McGreevy recently presented at the University of Georgia's Symposium on Integrative Conservation. This event encourages graduate students and faculty from different disciplines to exchange ideas and help facilitate integrative approaches to future research. The presentation brings together McGreevy's research from Source Chaude, Haiti that began in 2012 and collaborative work with Elkins Voltaire (State University of Haiti) in 2016 as part of Mark Schuller’s (Northern Illinois University) NSF CAREER funded study in Haiti’s Southern Peninsula. A combination of in-depth interviews, participant observation, and remote sensing illuminate trends that question common narratives of environmental degradation in Haiti.

​A video of the presentation can be seen here.