Dr. Melina Packer is Assistant Professor of Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, on Ho-Chunk Nation land. Her research interests include queer feminist and anticolonial science studies, antiracist animal studies, critical public health, and environmental justice. She may frequently be found struggling to keep up with her delightfully insatiable canine companions, two English Pointers named Pepper and Rex.
In what ways does nature inspire or inform your work?
No one has taught me to question everything I think I know more than my canine companions, and I am so grateful to them for pushing me to think beyond the false, and limiting, nature/culture or human/animal binaries.
What does it mean to you to be part of a thriving ecosystem?
To care for oneself and others in the embodied knowledge that we are all fundamentally connected and interdependent.
