Emma is a master’s student in the Ecology and Environmental Science Program at the University of Maine. She graduated from Boston University in 2025 with a degree in Biology and Environmental Science, where her research focused on monitoring how different coral species respond to heat stress. Throughout her scientific career, Emma was always interested in understanding the relationship between people and the environment. This was brought about because of her own experience growing up on the coastline of Massachusetts. For her senior thesis project in her undergraduate degree, she was able to hold a conversation with a group of elderly people from her community to hear their own experiences growing up and what they felt had changed. Through this experience, she used more creative methods, specifically photography, to help spark conversations with the older demographic of her community. Now, in Maine, her research is focused on using a method called photovoice to gauge how high school students are visualizing social and environmental change in their coastal community (the Damariscotta River estuary) and how understanding these dynamics contributes to their concept of coastal resilience. She is very excited to continue her work in Maine and to have conversations with people in the hopes of bringing strength back to coastal communities.
