Solarpunk

I watched solarpunk take off first as an aesthetic, then an ideology and a genre, on Tumblr from about 2014-onwards. During that time, I was in graduate school, first as a masters and then a PhD student in English literature, studying science fiction. The emergence of a new genre was fascinating to me, and its burgeoning seemed to me, the more I researched the history of SF, to parallel in part the deliberate construction of the cyberpunk genre in the mid-1980s as a movement by SF authors and for SF authors.

I wrote on solarpunk as a genre mitigation for anthropocenic burnout in The Goose, an academic journal of ecocritism, in 2018, and have since spoken on it in several academic and non-academic venues.

From 2021-2022 I was one of the initial team of editors at Solarpunk Magazine, co-editing the non-fiction section, and though I am no longer with the magazine, I co-host Solarpunk Presents podcast, which started as a sub-show of the magazine’s Solarpunk Futures podcast, but quickly became its own thing.

In 2023, I gave a presentation called “From Capitalist Realism to Solarpunk Realities” (a collaboration with Elia J. Ayoub, Luka Dowell, and André Rosario aka HydroponicTrash) at the inaugural Solarpunk Conference. You can watch a recording of the panel here, and listen to our extended conversation after the panel here. I also contributed a written version of my talk to the conference proceedings, which you can read here.

In 2024, I moderated a panel (along with my Solarpunk Presents cohost Christina de la Rocha) on conflict in solarpunk stories, titled “Fistfights In Utopia: A Q&A Roundtable on Conflict in Solarpunk Stories”. You can listen to my 2024 behind-the-scenes interview with the Solarpunk Conference organizers here.

My thinking about the genre is influenced in no small part by the work of Sarena Ulibarri, Jay Springett, and Rhys Williams, the latter of whom brought the genre to academia in a way that interests me greatly. Solarpunk-adjacent academic thought I am influenced by includes (but is not limited to) work by Val Plumwood, José Esteban Muñoz, Stacy Alaimo, Kim Tallbear, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Hannah MacGregor, as well as the work of both the Petrocultures Research Group and Just Powers.

I know enough about solarpunk to know that I am not an expert on solarpunk, nor can one person think all of the solarpunk thoughts or do all of the solarpunk things. It is something I am very familiar with, but I do not own.

If you are working on a project that has to do with solarpunk, I would be very interested in hearing all about it.

Technology and Programming

Senior Data Engineer

Trust Science

January 2016 – March 2024
Edmonton, AB

  • Designed and built companies entire machine learning pipeline using Python, Docker, MLFlow and AWS systems.
  • Constructed a batch version of the main pipeline to allow for the back processing of millions of requests simultaneously.
  • Prototyped the earliest versions of the machine learning training system, and designed a system that allowed Data Scientists to push their models to production without them having to be redeveloped by the Engineering Team.
  • Constructed many custom ETL pipelines to handle the ingress and verify the correctness of Unique Customer Data.
  • Participate in discussion and management of priorities across all teams.
  • Managed of the data pipeline Git repository.

Data Analytics Consultant

VoyantTools Ualberta

January 2024 - September 2024 (contract)
Edmonton, AB

  • Aided in finding and fixing a memory leak in the system.
  • Converted backend to a Docker-based system to improve backend stability.
  • Conducted a mathematical review of data analytics used in the system to ensure correctness.

Education

Bachelor of Science (B.S.)

University of Alberta
Mathematics with Physics minor
2007 – 2011

Volunteer / Summer Camps

Camp Nakamun

Senior Camp Counselor

June - September, 2007, 2008, 2014 (seasonal)
Busby, AB

  • Supervised groups of 6–10 children in regular day-to-day activities.
  • Instructed and oversaw activities in low ropes, climbing, canoeing, and other fields.