08/12/2026
Laken Sylvander, Ph.D. Student, was awarded a Center for Culture, History and the Environment Research Group Grant as lead applicant. For the 26-27 academic year, she will steward the "Craft, cartography, and climate: Mapping multispecies migration of the Great Lakes" interdisciplinary research group consisting of graduate students and faculty across the Nelson Institute, geography, folklore, American Indian studies, English, and more.
This research approaches cartography as material culture, exploring how migration—human and more-than-human—is mapped in the context of climate change and environmental shifts through folk craft traditions. Focusing on craft practices in the Great Lakes region that entangle place, movement and materiality—such as Hmong migration story cloths, quilting, and Awikhigan birchbark maps—the research group will investigate how and why humans, non-humans and their materials migrate and shape place, and how these stories are told, mapped and archived through diverse materials. This project will blend geography, art history, creative and craft-based storytelling, design history, relevant area studies and environmental science to document contemporary climate‑driven movement across species.
