University of Idaho's Lionel Hampton School of Music’s Ruby Fulton wrote a musical score that encapsulated Idaho’s Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. When Teresa Cohn from the Department of Natural Resources and Society peeked at the sheet music, she found it beautiful but complex and alien. “But then one of the pianists playing the score said, ‘Wow, I’ve just never played a piece with such topography in it,’” Cohn said. “I looked at the notes and just thought, ‘Gosh, it really does look like the landscape of the Frank.’ The score was rugged. And you could hear the ruggedness in sound.” Learn more about this project here:

Leah Hampton’s journey with the Confluence Lab began fall 2021. She is the Environmental Humanities Fellow in Residence and the project coordinator for Stories of Fire, a project in partnership with Whitman College and the University of Oregon under the University of Oregon’s Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute for Racial and Climate Justice. It is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Confluence Work & Beyond In partnership with the Confluence Lab, Hampton is working on Stories of Fire, a project to create a polyvocal atlas to amplify stories around social and environmental justice in normally underrepresented rural communities. Through 2022, she will be conducting community workshops on the impacts of wildfires and other climate changes in the region. Her workshops will focus on finding ways to help people process the impact fire has had on their communities and how regional fires factor into the bigger picture of climate change. Hampton will also be teaching classes for the English department at the university. Hampton is the author of F*ckface, a collection of short stories about “people dealing with the environmental apocalypse who will never have the resources to fix it… or will they?”(Hampton). Her debut collection has been called the best book of 2020 by The Paris Review, the New York Public Library, Slate and more. It is a direct response to the impact of climate change and the destruction to Hampton’s home in Appalachia. Hampton’s Background Ever since she was a little girl, Leah Hampton has been writing stories. Her first stories were focused on folklore and fairytales, but always were tied to the mountains she called home. Her life took her in several other directions, but about seven years ago her path brought her to writing as a career and that became her main focus. However, she still stuck to her roots in North Carolina and wrote about the places she grew up and loved. While writing about the places she loved, Hampton noticed the ecological destruction occurring before her eyes, the kind of changes that leave destruction in their wake. The damage done to Appalachia and the surrounding area due to climate change has been a major part of her stories. Her next project will continue to focus on her love for her home in Appalachia, but it will look back to her roots as it focuses on folklore and oral traditions. Hampton’s poems, stories, and essays are published across many platforms and have received several different awards. Hampton’s essays have appeared in Guernica, an online magazine that focuses on art and politics, LitHub, an extensive literary website, and McSweeny’s, a literary journal that focuses on short stories, illustrations, and reportage. Her short story Parkway was included in the 26th issue of Ecotone, a literary journal that focuses on publishing the best of location-based fiction across the nation. She is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas, where she studied and wrote for three years. She has been awarded the Philip Roth Residency at the Stadler Center for Poetry and UT-Austin’s Keene Prize for Literature. Her awards list also includes several regional prizes including the Doris Betts Fiction Prize and the James Hurst Prize for Fiction.

Moscow, Idaho — Jan. 14, 2021 — The University of Idaho Confluence Lab, University of Oregon and Whitman College were awarded a three-year $4.52 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to launch the (PNJFI) that will address racial and climate justice issues. As part of PNJFI, the Confluence Lab will create a virtual “Stories of Fire: A Pacific Northwest Climate Justice Atlas” that illustrates people’s complex relationships with fire. In this context, an atlas comprises maps, stories, images and other representations of data that bring insight to a specific issue. Within the Confluence Lab, scholars in the humanities, arts, social sciences and sciences tackle Idaho environmental issues alongside community members using interdisciplinary approaches — especially related to storytelling, emotions and communication. The collaboration began in 2019 and was co-founded by Associate Professor Teresa Cohn from the Department of Natural Resources and Society and English faculty Associate Professor Erin James and Professor Jennifer Ladino. “We came together to think about ways we can address and explore environmental issues in Idaho and in the region in more interdisciplinary, creative and community-based ways,” Cohn said. James, Ladino and Cohn are partnering with Associate Professor Stacy Isenbarger in Art and Design on the “Atlas of Fire” project. The atlas will focus on the connections between fire, social justice, environmental justice and traditionally underrepresented communities, drawing on the environmental humanities to tell stories about the changing region. The atlas is one part of a larger suite of projects associated with the PNJFI. Ladino noted: “Wildfires highlight some of the social crises we are facing. By focusing on people’s personal experiences with fire, we can better listen to a diversity of rural voices and address social justice issues like settler colonialism, environmental racism and socioeconomic inequities.” In addition to a digital atlas incorporating geospatial technologies, the project will result in a traveling teaching toolkit, art exhibitions and storytelling workshops across the region. To create the “Atlas of Fire,” the team plans to incorporate GIS as well as a tool called photovoice, which invites community members to show and tell their own stories of fire using photography. The Confluence Lab plans to use photos and photovoice artifacts to spark conversations at the storytelling workshops. “A moment captured in a photograph tells us much more than just what’s in its frame. The rich experiences of those who take them will be threaded into the collection of these visual narratives,” Isenbarger said. The Northwest Knowledge Network will act as the “Atlas of Fire” repository, and the U of I Library’s Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning will help the team develop and present data in accessible ways. For more information, visit the University of Oregon website.

Kayla Bordelon is a Ph.D. candidate in the interdisciplinary Environmental Science program at the University of Idaho. She found her “intellectual home” in the Confluence Lab when it was first launched in 2019. "Working in the boundary spaces between the humanities, social and natural sciences suits my inclination towards the ambiguous, the complex and the critical." Kayla’s trajectory to graduate school inhabits those tendencies. After earning a bachelor’s degree in the liberal arts, Kayla spent her twenties exploring the human-environment relationship and social justice. She has worked as a backcountry wilderness ranger in the North Cascades, a trail crew leader along the US-Mexico border, an environmental educator in the “Victorian Alps” of Australia, an international service trip coordinator and guide in Central America, an interpretive ranger for the National Park Service, and a program coordinator for multiple nonprofit organizations working on social and environmental justice in the Pacific Northwest and Central America. These experiences shaped her sense of the world as entirely relational, “what we do for and to the earth, we likewise do for and to each other.” Storytelling in Climate Communication Kayla came to her Ph.D. work and the Confluence Lab with a curiosity about the value of storytelling to ground communication about the environment in lived-experiences. She notes how her own sense of self was cultivated through the stories told around the dinner table. “My dad is an amazing storyteller. His stories are mostly hunting, fishing and firefighting adventures, and that lore really got into my bones. I saw us as a family with sand under our fingernails and smelling a bit like fish guts.” While serving for three years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Panamanian highlands, Kayla recognized stories as a vessel for ecological knowing. “I spent countless evenings shucking beans and drinking sweet coffee, listening to my neighbors described the rich ecological history of their community, all tangled up in personal loves and losses. Story taught me that place through their eyes.” Confluence Lab Work & Beyond In the Confluence Lab, Kayla feels fortunate to be able to draw on the narrative expertise of humanities scholars to explore how stories are connected to our identities, place relationships, and the larger socio-ecological context. She is a collaborator on multiple projects that incorporate storytelling and science communication around issues related to climate change. Her dissertation is based on research within the NSF funded Communicating Fire project, exploring narrative to improve communication about the changing nature of wildfire in Idaho. She also serves as a Research Assistant on this project. In the Our Changing Climate project, Bordelon and Jennifer Ladino facilitate community climate dialogues utilizing climate change fiction as a jumping off point for discussion about the socio ecological impacts of climate change in Idaho. Bordelon is also the Confluence Lab lead on the NASA sponsored Earth to Sky – Idaho Regional Hub (ETS-Idaho), a partnership for advancing evidence-based climate communication. The group hosts professional development workshops for environmental educators to help improve climate communication, utilizing a network of NASA earth scientists and National Park Service communication strategies to do so. .

Aug. 11, 2020 In an effort to provide Idahoans with a better understanding of wildfire in Idaho, University of Idaho researchers are bringing together the voices of people on the landscape who view fire from a variety of perspectives. As part of a recently-funded project of the U of I’s Confluence Lab, “Communicating Fire” will draw from the narrative voices of fire managers, firefighters, fire scientists and people affected by both harmful and helpful wildland fire to provide a rich learning experience and increased participation among students in informal STEM learning in rural Idaho. Research shows that student learning is enhanced through storytelling, which is often lacking in traditional communication between scientists and the public, said Teresa Cohn, research associate professor at the College of Natural Resources’ McCall Field Campus. “The American West is rife with personal narratives of evacuation, smoke and disaster. Yet, alongside these deep, dramatic events, fire scientists carry a quieter but no less important message that fire has always been part of the western landscape, and many wildland fires play natural and beneficial roles.” Comprised of teachers, writers and scientists, the team will build a curriculum that incorporates interviews with “frontliners” who have firsthand experience with wildland fire, including the beneficial use of prescribed fire and the suppression and management of wildfire. The research team is distinctive because it includes two English faculty, Associate Professor Erin James and Professor Jennifer Ladino, who with Cohn are co-founders of the Confluence Lab. The lab brings together scholars in the humanities, social sciences, sciences and community members to engage environmental issues in Idaho. The stories that people tell about fire in the western landscape are as diverse as the ecological roles that fire can play, said Leda Kobziar, associate professor at the College of Natural Resources. “We hope to augment understanding of fire by exploring the power of narrative in communicating the nuances and complexities of fire science.” The project is exciting because it pairs science with storytelling, James said. “When we listen to stories, we learn what it is like to experience fire first-hand,” she said. The cross-disciplinary research team will provide workshops to train informal STEM educators, pilot summer programs and create a podcast based on their findings. “Our team will work collaboratively with informal educators based in rural areas of Idaho underrepresented in STEM fields,” Cohn said. The two-year project was funded to University of Idaho by National Science Foundation under award 2006101. The total project funding is $299,911 of which 100% is the federal share.

Written by Corrin Bond Feb. 13, 2019 The Confluence Lab, an interdisciplinary research lab, was founded by Erin James and Jennifer Ladino of the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences and Teresa Cohn of the College of Natural Resources. Students, faculty and staff are invited to celebrate the opening of the lab at 4 p.m. on Thursday, March 7 in the Integrated Research and Innovation Center (IRIC) Atrium. The lab will bring together scholars from the humanities, social sciences and sciences to engage in collaborative projects. It was founded on the premise that a clearer understanding of the emotions and prevalent stories surrounding environmental issues combined with efforts to improve communication and empathy across ideological, political and disciplinary divides will lead to more effective solutions for environmental problems. Although the lab officially opens on March 7, scholars from across campus met on Monday, Jan. 28 to kick-off the first part in a semester-long seminar series that will identify key lab members and potential future projects. The Confluence Lab is anchored in IRIC 116 and will provide interested scholars with a vital meeting place on campus in which they can share their work. Erin James says the lab's co-founders are "thrilled by the energy and enthusiasm coming from all over campus. People are eager for the kind of collaboration the lab aims to foster, the kind that foregrounds the roles that the humanities and social sciences play in tackling difficult and divisive environmental issues in our state." Jennifer Ladino adds, "The first working lunch was standing room only. So many faculty across campus have been working on environmental problems independently, or within their disciplines. The Confluence Lab is a place where people can gather to get outside of our disciplinary silos, to percolate ideas, and to execute projects together." Teresa Cohn is leading the Confluence Lab's inaugural project, a rephotography project in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. She will work with faculty and student researchers at the Taylor Wilderness Research Station to compare historical photographs with current photographs taken by researchers along the Big Creek Drainage--a project funded in part by long-term U of I supporter Janet Pope and the DeVlieg Foundation. Teresa describes the project as “an exciting interdisciplinary initiative. Rephotography is a method used in a variety of disciplines, and rather than choosing one, this project encourages different disciplines to bring their expertise to the project to better understand both social and ecological change, and how a variety of stakeholders interpret that change.” Moving forward, lab members will seek external grants to fund the execution of collaborative projects that focus on environmental issues in the state of Idaho.

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