Kirsten Rudestam is a PhD candidate in the Sociology Department at UC Santa Cruz. She studies water policy and management, sense of place with respect to resource management practices, and the role of affect and emotion in environmental politics. Her research focuses on the dynamics of contested land and water use practices within the Deschutes Basin of Central Oregon. Kirsten has a Master's in Environmental Science from the University of Oregon, and prior to her doctorate work, spent two years co-directing the University of Oregon's Environmental Leadership Program. She has almost ten years of experience teaching environmental field courses for undergraduate college students in the western United States and is strongly motivated by her commitment to experiential education as a mode of radical environmental pedagogy.
