Dr. Jennifer Atkinson (She/Her)
by Anna Wright
Raised in rural California, Dr. Jennifer Atkinson recalls growing up outside in the summer, “a bath of nature sounds”, crickets, calls of owls and darkness so deep you can’t see except for a blanket of stars and “clouds of moths around the porchlight.” She became connected to nature through these experiences and became devastated when she saw it being destroyed.
In 2017, after 10 years of watching students grapple with emotions around a growing global environmental crisis, Atkinson created a seminar course, “Environmental Grief and Climate Anxiety” thrilled that every seat was filled immediately. A couple weeks later local media reported about the course- filling comment sections and her inboxes with backlash on the topic. The most disheartening, comments accused her students of being coddled snowflakes. Simultaneously however, she became reassured from numerous letters from those outside of academia, such as nurses and grandparents that were feeling similar to her in struggling with the emotions brought on by the climate crisis. She believes “her seminar’s greatest value has been its ability to connect like-minded people”. Atkinson’s courses accomplish finding a meaningful way to not just navigate and find hope, but also to find meaningful actions for each individual.
In line with her PhD in English Literature from the University of Chicago, Atkinson co-authored and co-edited The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators: How to Teach in a Burning World (2024) with Sarah Ray Jaquette, the collection helping educators with teaching students amidst the environmental doom they are feeling. She has also written Gardenland which won EcoLit’s 2019 “Best Environmental Books” as well as many peer-reviewed publications exploring ecological connections and feelings of loss. Contributing to publications “Mourning climate loss: ritual and collective grief in the age of crisis” in CPSA Quarterly, a Publication by Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, and “How to Love a Burning World” in Solastalgia: An Anthology of Emotion in a Disappearing World.
Atkinson is a frequent speaker on climate grief. For example a UWB Alumni Lunch “Navigating Mental Health and Climate Change”, “Coping with Climate Anxiety” at National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Jan 2023 to participation in the “Mental Health Among Post-Pandemic Youth” panel with Dr. Lise van Susteren & Dr. Elizabeth Allured from UNICEF/Harvard Undergraduate Conference at Harvard University and many more. She speaks as much as she can about how we as humans are connected to the earth we live on, and why we feel destroyed seeing it destroyed.
Feeling alone in the despair of witnessing global devastation may have been at the heart of Atkinson speaking out about eco-grief. Providing coping tools and sitting with the emotions that arise to understand them, she builds avenues to find hope for all who attend her lectures or read her works. Many of those who hear her message are left feeling “empowered by learning about climate-change actions around the globe. ‘It’s easy to feel defeated, but all over the world, people are stepping up’”
