Dr. Adrian Ivakhiv, Professor of Environmental Thought and Culture in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and Fellow in the Gund Institute for Environment, retired from ̽̽ (̽̽) in May 2024. During his 21 years at ̽̽ Adrian had a great impact on his colleagues and students through research, instruction, and advising across multiple academic programs. Adrian was named Professor Emeritus by ̽̽ and was honored at a ceremony during the final weeks of the spring semester.
Adrian earned his PhD in Environmental Studies from York University. After teaching at York University and the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, he joined the faculty of the Rubenstein School in 2003 and was promoted to full professor in 2013. Adrian’s interdisciplinary research and teaching focused on the intersections of ecology, culture, identity, religion, media, philosophy, and the creative arts.
Reflecting on his many years of collaboration at ̽̽, colleagues shared words of admiration for Adrian. Their sentiments consistently emphasized his kindness, warmth, and leadership.
“Adrian is not only a thoughtful and probing scholar but also a kind and gentle colleague and a man of large integrity. His presence will be missed in the Environmental Program,” said David Massel, Professor and Director of Undergraduate Programs in the Department of History at ̽̽.
“Adrian has been such an important intellectual leader on campus and in the community,” said Luis Vivanco, Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at ̽̽. “He has tirelessly engaged with the big issues of our time, balancing deep scholarly engagement with community relationship building. I can think of no better example than the Feverish World Symposium he organized, which brought artists and intellectual luminaries to reflect on conditions for life on a warming planet. He’s a warm and generous colleague to boot. I will miss him.”
took place in October 2018 in Burlington, VT. It was a project of the EcoCultureLab, which Adrian co-coordinates with fellow Rubenstein School faculty member Kristian Brevik. In a , Adrian shared plans to continue and expand the work of the EcoCultureLab internationally. He described the project’s vision of “opening up of academic institutions like universities and colleges to their non-academic local and civic contexts through activities by which academia interfaces with public efforts to transform society along ecocultural lines.”
Adrian taught numerous graduate and undergraduate courses in Natural Resources, Environmental Studies, and in the Patrick Leahy Honors College. He was a member of the faculty in the Rubenstein School’s innovative Master’s in Leadership for Sustainability and Doctorate in Transdisciplinary Leadership and Creativity for Sustainability. Adrian served as the major advisor for 12 M.S. and Ph.D. students.
“I got to know Adrian in his role as my advisor for the past few years,” said Nina Smolyar, Ph.D. Student in the Rubenstein School, Gund Graduate Fellow, and Leadership for the Ecozoic Fellow. “He is thoughtful, kind, and a role model for humility, courage, and a growth mindset. I am constantly inspired by his keen intellect, rigor in inquiry and critical thought, and capacity to challenge me and himself towards emergent truth and ecocultural collective consciousness.”
Adrian was honored as a ̽̽ University Scholar, a Public Humanities Fellow, and held the Steven Rubenstein Professorship for Environment and Natural Resources from 2016 to 2020. He founded and co-led the EcoCultureLab, which organizes collaborative engagements between ecologically oriented artists, scientists, humanists, and the broader community. He served as Acting Director of the Environmental Studies program at ̽̽, a Senior Research Fellow at the Cinepoetics Center for Advanced Film Studies at the Free University of Berlin, a Fulbright Scholar, and a Fellow of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society.
An accomplished writer, Adrian has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles. His books include Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona, Shadowing the Anthropocene: Eco-Realism for Turbulent Times, and the critically acclaimed Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, and Nature. His articles have been published across numerous disciplines including film and media studies, cultural and literary studies, religious and pilgrimage studies, human geography, and Ukrainian studies.
Adrian’s work has had an impressive global reach. He was interviewed by Krista Tippett for the “On Being” program, and he has been invited to speak on four continents and in more than 12 countries. Adrian served as president of the Environmental Studies Association of Canada, an executive editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, founding co-editor of the international, open-access, peer-reviewed journal Media+Environment, and on the editorial boards of several journals including Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture; Green Letters; The Journal of Ecocriticism; and Environmental Communication.
“Adrian has done remarkable work bringing together the arts and the environment, he has been a champion for the inclusion of the humanities in our School,” said Allan Strong, Interim Dean of the Rubenstein School. “We are grateful for his two decades of service and contributions to our community and we are wishing him the very best in his new role.”
In the summer of 2024, Adrian will return to his home country of Canada, taking on a new role as the J. S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.