Jennifer Atkinson

Dr. Jennifer Atkinson is a professor in the field of environmental humanities at the University of Washington, Bothell. Her seminars on Eco-Grief & Climate Anxiety have been featured in the New York Times, National Geographic, Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News, and many other outlets. Dr. Atkinson's most recent book, The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators (co-edited with Sarah Jaquette Ray), offers strategies to help young people navigate the emotional toll of climate breakdown. She regularly collaborates with youth activists, psychologists, climate scientists and policy makers beyond the university to lead seminars on climate and mental health. Her podcast "Facing It" also provides tools to channel eco-anxiety into action. Currently, Dr. Atkinson is coordinating a team of interdisciplinary scholars and activists from around the world in examining the role of despair and hope within the Climate Generation, as featured on the website "An Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice” (a project supported by a grant from the Rachel Carson Center in Munich). Dr. Atkinson is also the author of Gardenland: Nature, Fantasy and Everyday Practice, a book that explores garden literature as a "fantasy genre" where people enact desires for social justice, joyful labor, and contact with nature. Her writing on the history of gardening in hard times has been featured on programs like NPR, The Conversation, and Earth Island Journal. Dr. Atkinson holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Chicago, and lives in Seattle where she’s taught at the University of Washington since 2009.