Folks who are on the EDGI Advisory Committee
Jessica Varner is co-curator of EDGI’s oral history project and the A People’s EPA (APE) website. She also serves on EDGI’s Advisory Committee and currently is a fellow at the University of Southern California Society of Fellows in the Humanities (in architectural and environmental history).
Christopher Sellers is a Professor of History at Stony Brook University whose work has delved into the history of environment and health, of cities and industries, and of inequality and democracy, with a focus on the United States and Mexico. A specialist in oral histories as well as the history of environmental politics, he has headed up EDGI’s Policy Monitoring and Interviewing initiative, “wrangled” its reports starting with “EPA Under Siege” (June 2017), and served on its Coordinating Committee, more recently a co-moderator. He has also contributed to another working group, the Environmental History Action Collaborative (EHAC).
Steve retired from a 35 year career in software development and project management. He began his career at Bell Laboratories after receiving his Masters degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of Colorado in 1982.
Steve most enjoys programming, having worked with C, C++, Java, JavaScript, and Python. He developed and taught courses in C and C++. He is currently working as a volunteer on EDGI’s Environmental Enforcement Watch (EEW) project.
Steve lives in Bellingham, Washington with his wife Karen. He enjoys hiking and biking, and is active in several environmental groups locally and nationally.
Mark M. Chambers is an historian at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York, where he also earned a Ph.D. in United States environmental history. Mark teaches and writes about the human intersections with the environment, with science and with technology, which is evidenced in his first book, Gray Gold: Lead Mining and Its Impact on the Natural and Cultural Environment, 1700–1840 highlighting the amalgamation of Native American early mining and smelting techniques with settlers and African slave practices. Mark came to EDGI in June 2020 following the death of George Floyd, and he desired to better understand the significance of social justice. While working with EDGI, Mark spent eighteen months as a Rita Allen Civic Science Fellow and he started to think and write about the influences that environmental justice activists have had on the National Institutes of Environmental Health (NIEHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) related to community-based participatory research to protect human health.
Elizabeth (Scout) Blum is the Interview Coordinator for EDGI’s Federal Employees Interviewing Project. As a professor of history at Troy University in Alabama and environmental historian, her work focuses on the history and dynamics of environmental activism. She has been a member of EDGI since 2017 and is on the advisory committee.
Gretchen Gehrke is a founding member of EDGI and leads EDGI’s Website Governance program. She is an environmental and information researcher whose work focuses on the intersection of science and democracy. Gretchen earned her PhD in Environmental Geochemistry at the University of Michigan, and dual bachelor’s degrees in Chemistry and Environmental Earth Sciences at Dartmouth College.
Izzy Pacenza is the Safeguarding Data and Information Project Coordinator for EDGI’s Website Governance working group. Izzy is passionate about understanding how environmental injustices connect to larger social and political systems. Since joining EDGI in 2022, she has worked to advance the environmental right to know by safeguarding and expanding access to critical vulnerable data and information.