Our Team
Director
Melinda Benson, Regents' Professor, Geography and Environmental Studies
Melinda Morgan is a professor in Geography and Environmental Studies at The University of New Mexico. Along with University of Utah law professor Robin Craig, she is the author of The End of Sustainability: Resilience and the Future of Environmental Governance in the Anthropocene. Her research and scholarship focus on the emerging environmental governance regimes, with a particular focus on how these approaches to environmental challenges interface with existing legal and regulatory requirements. She teaches courses in natural resource management, including public lands, water governance, and introduction to environmental studies. You can find links to her papers available on her Social Science Research Network page.
Associate Director
Dr. Fred Gibbs, Associate Professor, Department of History
Graduate Assistant
Desiree Loggins, Geography and Environmental Studies Ph.D. student 
Desiree is a second year Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at UNM. Her research centers place-based communities and their relationships to land, water, and modern environmental management in New Mexico. Her dissertation will focus on the political ecology of gender and technology in acequia governance and acequia lifeways. Prior to academia, Desiree worked at the National Audubon Society as a facilitator, organizer, and advocate for flowing rivers, working lands, and resilient communities in the arid West. She has an undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies from University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Masters of Science in Geography and Environmental Studies. Read her latest essay on the afterlife of colonial water infrastructure in the anthology, Water Bodies: Love Letters to the Most Abundant Substance on Earth. Desiree is also collaborating with CESOS on community engaged work as a Center fellow.
Graduate Fellows
Katie Slack, Geography and Environmental Studies Master's Student
Katie Slack is a second year doctoral student in the department of Geography and Environmental Studies. They are interested in using GIS and web mapping to further foster biodiversity and resilient urban environments in the face of climate change. Katie is interested in more-than-human geography, political ecology, and critical physical geography. Outside of academics Katie enjoys spending time with their cats, exploring the outdoors, and reading sci-fi and fantasy novels.
Undergraduate Fellows
Natalia Leon, Anthropology, GIS minor
Past Team Members
Bianca Camacho
Gus Guikema
Joe Scala
William Tatman
Ramona Malczynski
Taressa Nield
Joshua Driscol
Elizabeth Chou
Cheryn Vigil
Charley Allen
Cassidy Tawse-Garcia
Alexandra Mirabal
Al-Ekram Elahee Hridoy
Desiree Loggins
Juna Keehn
Meira Williamson
Eva Gemrich
The center is supported by staff and works in cooperation with GES, Sustainability Studies, other interdisciplinary centers at UNM, and the College of Arts & Science. Additionally, our community members are critical to the success of the center. We move our work forward together.
