Lab Info
What's in a "Lab"?
Yes, the Living Memory Lab could be considered a lab in the conventional sense. Originating from a single scholar exploring a series of research questions surrounding an overarching concept. The Living Memory Lab employs multiple scholars across multiple disciplines and paradigms to better understand the patterns, contexts, and power at the heart of food-based memorials.
Lab could also be interpreted in several other means, however:
Labor or Laboris for the work that these memorials do. As many working and studying within the realm of memory and heritage highlight, it is no longer sufficient to focus solely upon the historical accuracy of heritage, but rather dwell more upon the work that heritage does. How do these living memorials shape our understanding of who does or doesn't belong within our histories, our farms, our gardens, or our kitchens? Who has been left out of this work? How does the work combat or commit violence? And how might this toil or the labor of these living memorials be situated among equally challenging forces shaping our broader landscapes of memory and heritage?
While fueled transdisciplinarily, the Living Memory "Lab" finds its roots within geography. Because of this, the scientific method does not drive its work. Instead, the performing and visual arts, a humanities-oriented environmental philosophy, and cultural and historical contexts from the social sciences balance efforts to identify ecologically or socially-informed truths.
If taken as a lab, in the traditional sense, it should be conceived as a "living lab." As an affiliate of the Lake Superior Living Labs Network, the Living Memory Lab also wishes to replicate the network's goals of engaged, applied, and adaptive pedagogical practice and a space for students to grow and for an engaged and supportive organization aiming for mutual benefit in any research or public engagement and activities.
Lily Klanderman is a first year social science major at Michigan Tech university. She helped create the database for the living memory lab, record and sort data for some of the varieties studied and compared. She also researched and wrote the section on women representation in the memorial landscape for the literature review.
Ila Swier is working toward a Sustainability Science and Society degree. She is passionate about sustainable urban planning, food systems, and ecology. In her free time she explores the outdoors through hiking, rock climbing, and biking. Ila has secured a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the MTU Pavlis Honors College to explore the role of women celebrities represented across living memorials.
Emma Wuepper is a Ph.D student at Michigan Technological University. Her research interests include textile conservation and the relationship between handcraft and industrial clothing production. She is currently assisting with digitizing an historic textile collection in Upper Michigan.
Grace Murray is pursuing a bachelors in Policy and Community Development at Michigan Technological University. She is interested in GIS, community focused projects, political science, and human-environment interactions. Grace enjoys reading, playing video games, hammocking, traveling, and drinking tea. Grace has been awarded a NASA-Michigan Space Grant Consortium research grant and an MTU Pavlis Honors College Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship to explore the impacts of living memorials to female political leaders.
Dr. Mark Rhodes is an Assistant Professor of Geography studying the intersections of memory, identity, and landscape. They are particularly compelled by biographical narratives, and how they are shaped, erased, manipulated, and impactful. As a product of and form of resistance to industrial agriculture, they see living memorials as central to MTU's industrial heritage, environmental policy, and sustainable communities graduate programs.
Julianna Bartoszek is an Anthropology and Computer Science double major at Michigan Tech. Her interests include ethnography and the development of communication. Her research into the Indigenous representations of living memory has been funded with a fellowship from the MTU Pavlis Honors College Undergraduate Research Internship Program.
Hailey Tennant is a junior at Michigan Technological University where she is majoring in Psychology and has a minor Law and Society. Hailey grew up in Flint, Michigan where the Flint Water Crisis sparked her interest in solving complex problems and driving positive change across disadvantaged populations. She is a member of the McNair Scholars Program at MTU where she conducted research on the geographies of living memory, researching the representation of Juan and Eva Perón.