Rebecca Patterson-Markowitz

I am a qualitative social scientist with a background in feminist and health geography. My research interests center on the dynamic interplay between bodies, health, and environments, with a particular focus on community health and well-being in the wake of social and environmental trauma. My dissertation research focused how movements for social justice in the United States are taking up and elaborating trauma healing frameworks to look beyond individual healing towards models of social transformation as part of collective healing. I bring this lens to my work as a postdoctoral field researcher on a NOAA funded project lead by Dr. Christina Greene (CLIMAS) and Dr. Katie Clifford (Western Water Assessment) that seeks to understand the social impacts of wildfires in rural Southwestern communities. In addition to my scholarly work, I completed a three year training Somatic ExperiencingTM, a nervous system theory and practice of trauma healing.