Featured Fellow: Juna Keehn

Project: Albuquerque Backyard Refuge Program

Juna is a first-year master’s student in Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of New Mexico. She graduated from Oberlin College in 2019 with a BA in History and Rhetoric. After leaving Ohio, she lived and worked in Philadelphia as a bike mechanic and more recently has spent two field seasons camping and collecting native seeds in Northern New Mexico. Her academic research interests lie in ecology and climate change resiliency. Juna loves taking the Rail Runner to see her sister and niece in Santa Fe every week, being a fan of the WNBA, and admiring people’s bikes.

In her fellowship with the Center for Community Geography this semester, Juna will be working with Albuquerque Backyard Refuge and Rio Grande Return with a focus on native seed collecting and saving. Throughout the spring she will support Albuquerque Backyard Refuge’s many events, including at the Backyard Refuge Day at Gutiérrez Hubbell House, and help out at the Rio Grande Return farm in Corrales. In April she will lead a workshop on the ethics and strategies of native seed collection.