Fern Thompsett is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. Her dissertation research explores the Anti-Civilization Movement, an anarchist environmental movement that coheres around an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist critique of mass agriculture. Fern conducts ethnographic fieldwork in the US Pacific Northwest, where the movement originated, to investigate how those inspired by anti-civilization ethics put these ideas into practice. Much of this work is oriented around people's relationships with plant species, whether in terms of foraging wild edibles, exploring animist and Pagan modes of relationality, or reckoning with the effects of climate change. Fern has previously published work on anarchist and egalitarian pedagogies, in the context of the free university movement.

Working Group: Seeds of Diaspora