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.
In the Sawtooth National Forest. Photo: Dave Horton.
Collecting plastic pollution on the west coast of Sweden. Photo: Maya Weeks.
Building fence for prescribed grazing with goats in the San Francisco Bay Area. Researching plastic pollution has led me to practice land stewardship with small ruminants. 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 research and works across academia, the arts, environmental policy, and agriculture. Maya has published and held artist residencies nationally and internationally, and she is the author of Myth of the Garbage Patch (THOUSANDS Press). Maya is faculty 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. 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