Wölfle-Hazard will present ecological field research practices that are grounded in an affectively oriented queer and trans focus on love and grief for rivers and fish. Drawing on the idea of underflows—the parts of a river’s flow that can’t be seen, the underground currents that seep through soil or rise from aquifers through cracks in bedrock—Wölfle Hazard will discuss underflows in river cultures, sciences, and politics where Native nations and marginalized communities fight to protect rivers, using examples from current co-created research projects on the Klamath River (OR and CA) and Duwamish River (WA).
Dr. Wölfle-Hazard's research focuses on ecological and social dimensions of human relations to rivers and firescapes and their multi-species inhabitants, and on how queer trans feminist thought can transfigure ecological science as it’s used by Indigenous and non-Native practitioners. His book Underflows: Queer Trans Ecologies and River Justice explores how a queer-trans-feminist approach can ally with Indigenous praxis to renew human-water-fish relations. An activist and artist with formal training in ecology, geomorphology, critical social science, and feminist science and technology studies, he currently works as a Fire Advisor for UC Cooperative Extension, based in Humboldt Co, CA.