Thesis

Where the magic happens.

I’m currently wrapping up my time at Antioch University Seattle with a thesis on ethnobotanical knowledge and public health.

Antioch’s program has been really unique in that the degree requires a high level of competence in 3 fields: systems and complexity theory, social change/innovation and applied design. It’s very difficult and complex, but it’s opened up a world of possibilities for my thinking of botanical medicine practice and public health.

Throughout my entire adult life, I’ve held that the more we know and can appropriately engage with the other life forms around us, the healthier we’ll be–as individuals and communities. Doing that work can take so many different forms: outdoor/environmental education, rewilding, gardening and farming, eating locally and seasonally, botanical medicine education and training, self/home care.

As good grad students do, I’m taking on the issue in an academic setting–seeing what can be sussed out in the literature and through interviews/case studies about plant knowledge and its connection to collective health. I mean, I can already drum up a number of reasons, ideas and concepts about why this stuff is important. And to strategically shift our social structures towards the more resilient, one needs to speak a different language and, usually, be backed up by fancy studies.

I’m also out to really challenge my thinking and assumptions on these issues, so please feel free and welcome to email me about it.

In the coming months, I’ll be posting any and all thesis-related musings here. Making medicine and cooking is my primo relaxing and coping activity, so I imagine one will see a plethora of recipes about the page as well!