Laura Ogden

Tel: 305.348.6663 | ogdenl@fiu.edu

In the broadest sense, my research seeks to understand the ways in which human and nonhuman processes interact to create landscapes, with a particular emphasis on the politics that shape our landscape practices. My work bridges the social and biophysical sciences, both drawing from social and ecological theory and making contributions to these literatures. In particular, my work advances scholarship in environmental anthropology, post-humanities studies, and socioecological theory. For the past decade I have conducted fieldwork in the Florida Everglades, though I am currently involved in a new multi-site comparative project. I have published in both the American Anthropologist and Cultural Geographies. The University of Minnesota Press is publishing a forthcoming book, Swamplife: People, Gators and Mangroves Entangled in the Everglades that portrays the lively collaborations among mangroves, alligators, hunters, outlaws, and snakes in the Everglades.

A related focus of my research examines the social and ecological impacts of land use/land cover change in southern Florida. Our study site, southern Miami-Dade County, has traditionally served as a rural, agricultural buffer between urban Miami and the Everglades. In the past twenty years, the region has experienced rapid urbanization with residential development replacing former rural lands. We refer to this research as the “lawn project,” reflecting the predominance of this type of land cover in our study site. Our research, which is funded through the National Science Foundation’s Florida Coastal Everglades, Long Term Ecological Research program (FCE LTER), seeks to understand the social and ecological implications of lawn production at multiple scales. Our overarching goal is twofold: to understand the complexity of the interactions, drivers and feedbacks that produce lawns (and “lawn people,” as Paul Robbins terms it) and to develop spatially-explicit theories of these patterns and processes. I have other ongoing projects on the cultural history of Everglades National Park that is supported by the National Park Service.