Welcome Associate Director Dr. Miriam Gay-Antaki to the Center for Community Geography Team!
The Center for Community Geography welcomes Associate Director Dr. Miriam Gay-Antaki to the team. Dr. Gay-Antaki will manage funding competitions for the Center, provide direct project support, and assist with public events, trainings, and workshops. As a feminist geographer, Dr. Gay-Antaki is interested in better understanding contested environmental discourses and practices and what people in New Mexico – especially the most silenced – do to maintain access and control over decisions that concern them. Center Director Dr. Maria Lane is looking forward to having Dr. Gay-Antaki aboard as the Center grows, “Miriam is new to UNM, so I’m delighted that she is enthusiastic about getting involved right away with community organizations. Her experience with fieldwork and with climate issues will be a great asset to the center, where students and faculty are looking for ways to support community partners as they face critical environmental issues in our home state.”
Dr. Gay-Antaki believes Geography is a discipline uniquely suited to pursue intersections between knowledge, environment, and power. She has worked to clarify the networked connections between international climate policy and science, the exclusions, and inclusions of diverse voices in the climate debate, and the consequent differential effects on people’s livelihoods in Oaxaca, Mexico. Applying this lens to New Mexico brings exciting possibilities for community work and a wealth of resources from Dr. Gay-Antaki’s experience as a researcher. “New Mexico has fascinating human environment dynamics. While it is a place that will be extremely vulnerable to climate change, it is also a place that has shown extreme resilience. There is so much to learn about the barriers and opportunities in the ways different New Mexican groups negotiate and manage their environment.” Says Dr. Gay-Antaki.
Dr. Gay-Antaki is drawn to community engaged work because, “Community engaged work shies away from what Feminist Scholar Donna Haraway has called “The God Trick” of seeing everything from nowhere. This approach, advertised as impartial and objective, silences voices on the ground that have an immense repository of knowledge. Qualitative methods, interviews, field notes, participant observation, informed by feminist insights pushes me to actively seek out different perspectives to resolve complex socioenvironmental problems such as climate change.” With a focus on these methods, Dr. Gay-Antaki envisions that the Center will be the hub for students, academics and professionals looking for community engaged work. This hub will be the go-to-place for internships, study opportunities, and a contact point for communities looking to work with UNM to answer pressing questions.
Dr. Gay-Antaki is excited about the opportunity to work with New Mexican residents and UNM students and faculty to solve pressing socioenvironmental problems. Students and faculty are encouraged to join a discussion Dr. Gay-Antaki is facilitating between Dr. McEvoy and Dr. Warner on climate change and adapting to flood risk and drought on April 8th at 4:00pm to see how Associate Director Dr. Miriam Gay-Antaki is strengthening the Center’s work and mission.
