Environmental & Social Justice

Jadda is a Bellwether Postdoctoral Scholar at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, where she partners with Ohlone youth and cultural leaders to co-design mixed-reality exhibits. Alongside this work, she continues the community-based research she co-developed in Maui, Hawaiʻi, exploring how students engage with Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) biocultural knowledge alongside Western science in environmental and wildfire mitigation education. Broadly, her work centers Indigenous epistemologies, place-based education, and epistemic justice in environmental and science education.

Yadira Silva Rios is a first generation doctoral student, youngest daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants, born and raised on Staten Island, NY. Growing up fishing and clamming, gardening, and cooking up feasts for her family drew her to a career in food. With her PhD, she is exploring how sustainable food futures are defined within environmental sciences, and how the Latin American and diaspora experience may be misrepresented within it. She hopes to encourage the use of community-led definitions of sustainable food futures.