Hello! My name is Maya Weeks. I am a geographer and poet taking creative approaches to climate change. My interdisciplinary, mixed-methods work focuses on oceans, pollution, gender, and land stewardship. A more detailed biography of mine is below.
Photo: Dave Horton.
Plastic pollution on the west coast of Sweden. Photo: Maya Weeks.
Dr. Maya Weeks is a feminist political ecologist and poet who merges qualitative and creative methods in her work on environmental issues. Her areas of interest include oceans, pollution, and land stewardship. She prioritizes interdisciplinary community-engaged research and works across academia, the arts, environmental policy, and agriculture. Maya is a lecturer at Rutgers University and visiting researcher at the University of California in Davis Feminist Research Institute. Previously, she served as a California Sea Grant State Fellow and the Director of Outreach and Development at the California Public Domain Allottee Association. A first-generation college graduate, Maya earned her B.A. in Language Studies (Spanish) from the University of California in Santa Cruz; her M.F.A. in Creative Writing (English) from Mills College; and her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California in Davis, where she wrote her dissertation on marine plastic pollution from a feminist environmental justice perspective using qualitative and creative methods funded by a Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Fellowship at Bodega Marine Laboratory. Her first book, Myth of the Garbage Patch, was published on THOUSANDS Press in 2026. She serves on the board of the American Association of Geographers’ Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group and is a member of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty. She is a settler of Russian Jewish, Polish, and unknown descent.
Languages: English, Swedish, Danish, Spanish