This Research Talk features Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Lydia Jennings, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Theresa Ong, and Research Associate of Environmental Studies Martha Torstenson.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Lydia Jennings, environmental soil scientist and a citizen of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe (Yoeme) and Huichol (Wixáritari). Research interests are in soil health, environmental remediation, Indigenous science, Indigenous Data sovereignty and science communication.

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Theresa Ong is an agroecologist who combines theory with empirical work in agricultural systems to understand how complex interactions between the environment, organisms and people ultimately influence food production and ecosystem stability. Her work focuses on how biocomplexity in terms of space, time and species diversity, influences the resilience of agricultural systems to both ecological and political perturbations. 

Research Associate of Environmental Studies Martha Torstenson is a theoretical ecologist whose work has explored animal migration in the context of global change and pathogen evolution. As a postdoctoral researcher in Theresa Ong's lab, she is applying the tools of ecological theory to agroecosystems in order to understand and motivate transitions to sustainable food systems.

This programming coincides with a faculty exhibition by Associate Professor of Studio Art Chris Sollars, The Neighbors, a new body of work inspired by coexistence and inquiry.

Set in rural Vermont, The Neighbors is a multimedia video installation about the non-human inhabitants of the lands around the artist’s home. After over two decades living in San Francisco, California, Sollars moved to Vermont in the fall of 2024. To get to know his new home and neighbors, he has spent the past two years interacting with his surroundings through slow listening and observation, learning them spatially and temporally.  This intentional gathering of information has taken the form of diaristic snapshots taken throughout the seasons, field recordings, the collection of discarded nests and materials, and the placement of wildlife cameras in the open woodland edges of his home, which neighbors a land trust, a national forest, and the Appalachian Trail.

The Neighbors is on view from Sept. 15 – Nov. 8, 2026.