People - Blue Lab

Image courtesy of USGS

Founded in 2021 and led by Allison Carruth and Barron Bixler, Blue Lab is an environmental storytelling and media production studio housed at Princeton University. The lab provides a training ground for established, emerging and aspiring environmental storytellers.

In our work, we bridge the tools of art and science, research and creative practice, historical knowledge and speculative imagination. The lab's core members have expertise in a wide range of fields, including American studies, anthropology, environmental arts, environmental humanities, geoscience, hydrology, Latin American history, multispecies justice, poetry and poetics, photography and theater. We partner with artists, editors, producers, journalists and filmmakers as well as community groups, media outlets and environmental organizations.

Current members

Professor of American Studies and Environmental Studies; Blue Lab Director and Principal Investigator
Allison Carruth

Blue Lab Creative Director & Project Mentor; Professional Specialist, American Studies
Barron Bixler

Lab Assistant and Project Manager

Asela Perez-Ortiz

PhD, English

Diana Little

PhD, English

Kyra Morris

Postdoctoral Fellow, HMEI

Jessica Ng

PhD candidate, Geosciences
Gemma Sahwell

Professor of American Studies and Environmental Studies; Blue Lab Director and Principal Investigator

Allison Carruth

Allison Carruth is Professor of American Studies and Environmental Studies at Princeton University, where she is co-founder and director of Blue Lab.

For over a decade, her research and creative practice have bridged ideas from and re-imagined the boundaries between the environmental arts, humanities and sciences. Collaborative projects have been central to this work—from the Food Justice Conference to Play the LA River. From 2016-2020, she was the founding director of UCLA’s Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS). While leading LENS, she was an executive producer of an environmental series featuring original essays and documentary films, developed in partnership with KCET, the country’s largest public media outlet. She is the author of Global Appetites: American Power and the Literature of Food (Cambridge 2013) and co-author of Literature and Food Studies (Routledge 2018). Her book Novel Ecologies is forthcoming from University of Chicago Press (2024). Her work has been supported by ArtPlace America, the National Science Foundation, the University of California Humanities Research Institute and the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics.

Email:acarruth@princeton.edu

Blue Lab Creative Director & Project Mentor; Professional Specialist, American Studies

Barron Bixler

Barron Bixler is a social-environmental documentary photographer, filmmaker, writer, designer and curator. He is co-founder and creative director at Blue Lab and holds a Professional Specialist appointment in Princeton University’s Effron Center for the Study of America. Barron’s photographs, writings, and other art and design projects have been featured in BOOM: A Journal of California, Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, Analog Forever Magazine, Civil Eats, KCET Artbound, Dwell, LAist, KUSC Arts Alive, the Fresno Bee and the Stockton Record.

Email:bixler@princeton.edu

Lab Assistant and Project Manager

Asela Perez-Ortiz

Asela is Blue Lab’s lab assistant and project manager. She is a seasoned audio and visual storyteller, and has supported production of the lab’s podcast and filmmaking projects.

Outside of her professional endeavors you’ll find her watching a film at the local Garden Theatre or taking leisure strolls along the picturesque Delaware and Raritan Canal on sunny afternoons.

Postdoctoral Fellow, HMEI

Jayme Collins

Jayme Collins is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the High Meadows Environmental Institute. She is at work on both a book project and a podcast. The book is titled “Composing in the Field: Situated Poetries and Environments” and is about post-1960s avant garde poetry, imperialism and land use. The podcast investigates the interfaces between archives and ecology, from climate crises to conceptualizations of preservation. She writes about the intersections between literature, art and the environmental present. Her work can be found in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Wordsworth Circle and Jen Bervin: Shift, Rotate, Reflect.

PhD, English

Diana Little

Diana Little receive her PhD in English from Princeton University in 2025. Before coming to Princeton, she earned her B.A. from McGill University and her MSt in English (1700-1830) from Jesus College, Oxford. Her research interests include transatlantic Romanticisms, poetry and poetics, history of science, ecocriticism, empire, and indigenous literatures. She has recently published an article about Wordsworth’s ecological poetics in the European Romantic Review.

Her dissertation project, Imperial Erosions: The Geological Poetics of Empire in Britain and America, 1780-1850, explores how poets and writers such as Erasmus Darwin, Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, William Cullen Bryant, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, and George Perkins Marsh explore the intersections between poetry, geology, and empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It argues that the emergence of geology in the late eighteenth century not only provided poets new ways of reading the earth, but new ways of reading the rise and fall – or rather the uplift and erosion – of empire.

PhD, English

Kyra Morris

Kyra Morris receive her PhD in English from Princeton University in 2025. Her dissertation, Landscapes of Loss, Forms of Recovery: Writing at the Margins of the Great Acceleration, asks how twentieth and twenty-first century poets and non-fiction writers use the boundary between literary and non-literary forms as a site for recovering meaning from landscapes marked by industry and violence. Her own work seeks to unsettle the boundary between critical and creative writing. With Blue Lab, she is working on a story about the New Jersey Meadowlands—20,000 acres of salt marsh defined by the Hackensack and Passaic Rivers. Since they became the garbage dump for New York City in the nineteenth century, the Meadowlands have been the site of difficult to quantify amounts of dumping as well as the site of development and speculation—a wasteland land that somebody always wanted to “reclaim” or “redeem.” This project will ask whether it’s possible to tell a different story. Kyra’s work has been published in The Atlantic and the journal Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment.

Postdoctoral Fellow, HMEI

Jessica Ng

Jessica Ng is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the High Meadows Institute and member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Environmental Justice investigating how popular narratives of climate action are shaped in the interaction between environmental science and visual culture, and between land and labor movements. She has a PhD in Earth Science from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, where she studied Pleistocene paleoclimate using ice cores and groundwater. In and out of the lab, she experiments with science and art as tools for resistance, for education, and for creating a world in which many worlds fit. Her public work can be found in Science for the People and The Hopper.

PhD candidate, Geosciences

Gemma Sahwell

Gemma Sahwell is a PhD student in the Geosciences department, where she uses stable isotope geochemistry as a tool to study the efficacy of shallow-water carbonate rocks as archives of global scale climate changes through Earth’s history. She became interested in Blue Lab as an extension of her scientific research, driven by the question of accessibility of scientific knowledge to wider audiences outside of the academy and experiments with auditory and visual modes of communication. Gemma is interested in bringing together new and old media with environmental science knowledge to tell compelling stories about earth’s past and our potential collective futures.

Postdoctoral Fellow, HMEI

Mario Soriano

Mario Soriano received his PhD in Hydrology and Water Resources from Yale University. His research draws on theoretical frameworks and methodologies from hydrogeology, sustainability science and applied data science to examine the movement of water and contaminants, and their intersections with human activities and values. His interests revolve around the linkages between water as a natural resource, an environmental driver and a pillar of well-being. He has experience in collaborative projects exploring the water-energy nexus, public health, indigenous agroecology, environmental justice and science communication. Within Blue Lab, Mario explores connections between hydrological model projections, uncertainty and emerging narratives of water futures embedded in various forms of knowledge and environmental storytelling.

Lab alumni

HMEI Intern, Summer 2024

Farah Arnaout ’26

HMEI Intern, Summer 2024

Christopher Bao ’27

HMEI Intern, Summer 2023

Braeden Carroll ’26

PhD Student, History and Theory of Architecture, Princeton School of Architecture

Patrick Jaojoco

HMEI Intern, Summer 2023

Alex Norbrook ’26

Postdoctoral Fellow, HMEI

Nathaniel Otjen

HMEI Intern, Summer 2024

Hannah Riggins ’27

HMEI Intern, Summer 2023
Jamie Rodriguez ’24

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Global Studies, UC Santa Barbara

Juan Manuel Rubio

HMEI Intern, Summer 2024

Jose Santacruz ’27

HMEI Intern, Summer 2023

Grace Wang ’26

HMEI Intern, Summer 2023

Max Widmann ’24

HMEI Intern, Summer 2024

Farah Arnaout ’26

Farah Arnaout ’26 is a senior studying architecture.

HMEI Intern, Summer 2024

Christopher Bao ’27

Christopher Bao is a head News editor for the The Daily Princetonian.

HMEI Intern, Summer 2023

Braeden Carroll ’26

Braeden Carroll is a sophomore undergraduate in Princeton’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. A New Jersey native, he has spent his life nestled in the wooded hills of Kinnelon, where he has come to love everything the natural world has to offer. He is a member of the Princeton Men’s Lightweight Rowing team, and he enjoys running in his free time. Though the next three years are sure to present new opportunities and plentiful paths, Braeden is currently specializing on the Architecture and Engineering track, with the hope of developing his ideas of how human infrastructure interacts with the environment around it, both physically and visually. His first project with the Blue Lab sees him working alongside Dr. Soriano in studying the long-term impacts of Super Typhoon Haiyan, with a fieldwork component in the Philippines.

Student researcher

Noa Greenspan ’23

Noa Greenspan is a freelance writer, editor, and audio producer who graduated from Princeton with a degree in English, environmental studies and creative writing. She worked with Blue Lab as an inaugural HMEI intern to research and produce audio stories about her home region of coastal Virginia as the community reconfigures to face sea level rise and flooding. Noa also has worked with Wyoming Public Media on two podcasts: Carbon Valley centers on coal’s decline in northeastern Wyoming, and The Modern West explores the history and evolving identity of the American West.

PhD Student, History and Theory of Architecture, Princeton School of Architecture

Patrick Jaojoco

Patrick Jaojoco is a filipino american writer, organizer, and musician; and PhD candidate in the History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. His current research explores Philippine experiments in civic and environmental development through the 20th century; and engages science and technology studies, carceral studies, and abolitionist scholarship to consider the role of infrastructure in crafting national identity.

Their writing has been published in exhibition catalogs as well as in e-flux, Artforum, the Brooklyn Rail, the Avery Review, and Companion Studies. Patrick has organized with Anakbayan, a transnational Filipino youth organization working toward national democracy in the Philippines; acted as an advisor for Social Justice Walks, a New York City based walking tour collective; and facilitated a project called the Decolonial Mapping Toolkit, a collectively organized experiment in reframing colonial histories in public space. Prior to coming to Princeton, Patrick worked as Director of Programs at FABnyc, and has assisted in organizing exhibitions at Storefront for Art and Architecture, Art in General, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among others. They were a 2020 AICA Art Writing Workshop participant and a member of NEW INC at the New Museum, and received a BA from New York University and MA in Curatorial Practice from the School of Visual Arts.

HMEI Intern, Summer 2023

Alex Norbrook ’26

Alex Norbrook is a sophomore studying history, politics, and environmental studies. Drawn to questions of capitalism, climate justice, and consumption, he is involved in Blue Lab’s “Mining for the Climate” project to uncover the competing narratives around lithium extraction and its social, environmental, and political impacts in the context of national urgency towards decarbonization. Alex is also a co-coordinator of Divest Princeton, bringing to light Princeton’s connections with the fossil fuel industry.

Postdoctoral Fellow, HMEI

Nathaniel Otjen

Nathaniel Otjen was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University. At Blue Lab, he co-led the project “Mining for the Climate,” a public-facing audio series that examines the contestations over narrative and futurity that have developed at sites of lithium extraction and renewable technology.

Student researcher

Magdalena Poost ’23

Magdalena Poost (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist who recently earned their AB in Socio-cultural Anthropology from Princeton University. Earning certificates in Environmental Studies, Creative Writing, and Theater, Magdalena’s dual thesis projects focused on shared meals as sites of memory, care, and climate change, and trans-ness as a relationship between body and language. Magdalena’s first project with through Environmental Media Lab used audio and sculptural mediums to consider fluidity, stability, and change as geologic phenomenon and as the lived effects of Tropical Storm Ida on the town of Lambertville, NJ. Currently a High Meadow Environmental Fellow based in Boston, Magdalena’s work now focuses on loneliness and the sky turning orange. They were the recipient of the High Meadow Environmental Institute’s 2023 Book Prize for Visual and Performing Arts, the Lewis Center for the Art’s 2023 Creative and Community Leadership Award, and can be found at magdalenapoost.com.

HMEI Intern, Summer 2024

Hannah Riggins ’27

Hannah Riggins is a junior studying public and international affairs with a minor in environmental studies.

HMEI Intern, Summer 2023

Jamie Rodriguez ’24

Jamie Rodriguez is an undergraduate student at Princeton University (class of 2024) studying English. Originally from Eastern North Carolina, Jamie grew up in a small coastal town known for its proximity to remote barrier islands and historically imagined as a home to pirates. In his courses and independent work, Jamie explores the entanglements of climate change, sexuality and the Southern United States in contemporary cinema. When he’s not watching movies or haunting the reading rooms of Princeton’s Firestone Library, Jamie enjoys leading backpacking trips and surfing on the Jersey Shore.

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Global Studies, UC Santa Barbara

Juan Manuel Rubio

Juan Manuel Rubio is a scholar of capitalism, labor and the environment. His work focuses primarily on the history of the mining industry and the struggles of those touched by its environmental legacy.

HMEI Intern, Summer 2024

Jose Santacruz ’27

Jose Santacruz is a junior studying architecture with a minor in urban studies.

HMEI Intern, Summer 2023

Molly Taylor ’25

Molly Taylor is a junior at Princeton studying history and computer science. As an intern with the Blue Lab, she worked in the summer of 2023 with the lab’s Archival Ecologies project, led by Jayme Collins. This work aligns with her interests in the environmental humanities, local history, and long-form storytelling. Molly also writes features for The Daily Princetonian, works as a Writing Center fellow, and helps organize the campus farmers market. Before Princeton, she spent a year working in a local history museum in western North Carolina and reporting on Chicago City Council meetings. Molly is from Chicago, Illinois.

HMEI Intern, Summer 2023

Grace Wang ’26

Grace Wang is a student at Princeton University. Passionate about the role of storytelling in climate education, she is dedicated to unpacking the complexities of climate narratives. Alongside her involvement in the Blue Lab, she enjoys writing and producing film and theatre. Grace is also an experimental video artist and photographer.

HMEI Intern, Summer 2023

Max Widmann ’24

Max Widmann is a senior at Princeton studying history, environmental studies, and urban studies. He is working with Blue Lab as an intern on the Mining for the Climate project, where he is producing an audio documentary about lithium extraction in North Carolina. Max is interested in questions of sustainable development, energy history, and environmental protection. Max has prior experience working with a migrant women’s empowerment organization in India, interning at museums, working in outdoor recreation, and volunteering at a community radio station.

Current Collaborators

John Higgins, Professor of Geosciences, Princeton University
Tim Szetela, Lecturer in Visual Arts, Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University
Kouvenda Media, Consulting producer for audio story projects