About

kianna (she/they) is a Black feminist environmental anthropologist, ethnographer, and story-collector whose work explores Black land relations, environmental justice, memory, and belonging. ki’s research asks how Black people cultivate care, kinship, and possibility on lands shaped by settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and ecological crisis.

Her dissertation—currently in progress—draws on interviews, participant observation, archival fragments, poetry, and personal narrative to trace how Black-identifying individuals in Seattle and beyond are reimagining relationships with land. From gardening and mountain summiting to organizing and building intergenerational community, these practices reveal everyday forms of refusal, resilience, and repair.

kianna’s scholarly work is grounded in Black feminist, anticolonial, and Earth-based traditions. She is especially influenced by thinkers like Katherine McKittrick, Zora Neale Hurston, Saidiya Hartman, Sylvia Wynter, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and is committed to research that is embodied, accountable, and oriented toward collective liberation.

Beyond the academy, kianna facilitates public education programs, develops interpretive content for environmental centers, and collaborates with community organizations on projects centering BIPOC experiences in land stewardship and conservation. Her work often bridges disciplines, weaving together anthropology, creative writing, ancestral listening, and environmental humanities.

kianna is a mixed race Haitian American and the grand-daughter of two agriculturalist from very different worlds. She love being outdoors, walking, hiking, camping, tide-pooling, bird-watching, catnapping! Otherwise, I manically write, crochet, play video games, and collect earrings.

Research Interests:
Black ecologies, ethnography, land-based practices, ancestral memory, settler colonialism, environmental justice, place-based education, speculative methods

Creative Practices:
Poetry, essay writing, audio story collecting, public interpretation, slow archival work

Current Projects:

Dissertation on Black land-based sociality in the Pacific Northwest

Co-creation of a national alumni network for environmental justice fellows

Interpretive programming at the Cedar River Watershed Education Center

BIPOC-centered outdoor affinity groups and conservation initiatives

Education

PhD Sociocultural Anthropology, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona 2022-2026

MA Sociocultural Anthropology, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona 2019-2023

BA Anthropology and Environmental Studies, Rollings College, 2014-2018

DDCSP Conservation Scholars Program, University of Washington, 2016-2017

Publications

Dieudonné, K., D. Ibarra, D. Frinton, S. Kenyon, P. Sabholk, J. Schafroth, and M. Carney. (under revision). “Like Writing an End-of-Term Paper, Together”: Reflections on Mobilizing a Collective Pedagogy. Transforming Anthropology.

Carney, M., D. Chess, D. Ibarra, K. Dieudonné, and M. Rascon-Canales. 2023. “A Million Other Factors Killing Us”: Black Women’s Health and Refusing Necropolitics-as-Usual during COVID-19. Social Science and Medicine, 330: 1-7. https://arizona-ua.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UA_INST/1mtjguq/alma991050472433903843

Research Experience

Graduate Research Assistant for the School of Anthropology, Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, and Regional Center for Food Studies at the University of Arizona

2023	Heat, Race, and the Body, PI: Jennifer Roth-Gordon
2022	Black Women’s Health and Refusing Necropolitics-as-Usual during COVID-19, PI: Megan Carney
2022	University Indian Ruin Oral History Project, PI: Diane Austin
2021	Adaptation in the Time of COVID, PI Diane Austin

Post-Baccalaureate Research Assistant for the Hille Rise Lambers Lab at the University of Washington

2018	Wildflower Phenology and Climate Change on Mt. Rainier (PI: Meera Lethi)

Teaching Experience

2025	Public Education Program Specialist, Cedar River Watershed Education Center, Seattle Public Utilities
2019-2024	Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Arizona
2018	Conservation Practice Team Advisor, Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships

2025	Haury-Dixon Dissertation Write-Up Fellowship, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona School of Anthropology Research Award, University of Arizona
2024	Junior Research Fellowship, Green New Deal for Public Schools, The Climate and Community Project BARA Graduate Scholar Fund Research Award Centennial Partners Scholarship Fund Award School of Anthropology Research Award
2023	School of Anthropology Research Award, University of Arizona
2022	School of Anthropology Research Award, University of Arizona
2021	Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS), Haitian Creole, Florida International University

Note: Multiple awards were granted to support preliminary and ongoing dissertation research.

Presentations

2025	Beyond the Colonial Specter: Haunting, Memory, and the Persistence of Black and Indigenous Worlds (Panel), AAA Annual Meeting, November (upcoming) Black Gardens: Holding the past, tending the present, and cultivating futures (Talk), HOLD // Where Do We Go From Here? Geographies of Liberation, Prescott College, April
2022	An Introduction to Oral History: Method and Application (Talk) Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology Research Symposium, March
2021	Adaptation in the Time of COVID (Poster) Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Conference, March

Community Service

2025-present	Grant Writer and Researcher, Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Alumni National Network Steering Committee, remote
2025-present	Volunteer, Golden Bricks Events, Western Washington
2025-present	Aspiration Insider (volunteer), Aspiration Alliance for Climate-Friendly Personal Finance, GreenFi
2022-present	Volunteer Researcher & Organizer, Collaborative between DDCSP@UW and the Quinault Indian Nation Division of Natural Resources’ Environmental Protection Unit (on behalf of Cultural Resource Officer Justine James, J.r.), Seattle, Washington
2022	Committee Member, Dunbar Community Health Center Steering Committee, The Dunbar Pavilion African American Arts and Culture Center, Tucson, Arizona
2020-2022	Graduate Student Representative, Curriculum and Scheduling Committee, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
2020-2022	Secretary, Anthropology Graduate Students at the University of Arizona (AGUA), Tucson, Arizona
2020	Editorial Board Member, Arizona Anthropologist, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
2019-2021	Alumni Mentor, Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program at the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, remote