NICK KOENIG PhD
Environmental Scientist & Educator—Climate Justice Activist—Critical Geographer
National Science Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow—Idaho EPSCoR
Department of Forest, Rangeland, & Fire Sciences—College Natural Resources
Department of Culture, Society, & Justice—College of Letters, Arts, & Social Sciences
University of Idaho
Hi y’all! My name is Nick Koenig and I study and teach on themes around the climate crisis, anti-colonial sciences, queer trans feminist geographies, creative pedagogies, and environmental justice. Please reach out if you would like to chat over some coffee, contact information below!
My work has traced a winding path starting from anti-pipeline environmental organizing in Kentucky to studying with the plant life of the Appalachian Mountains where I completed a BS in Botany at Eastern Kentucky University. My graduate school studies then took me to the University of Cambridge where I completed an MPhil in Anthropocene Studies focused on the sociocultural and political ecologies of the American Chestnut tree extinction and subsequent impacts on Appalachian communities.
I just wrapped up a PhD in Geography and MA in English at the University of Idaho mentored by Dr. Grant Harley in the Idaho Tree Ring Lab & Dr. Erin James in the Confluence Lab where I have brought an undisciplined approach to projects that have pulled from tree ring sciences, critical physical geography, narratology, climate pedagogies, abolition and Black geographies, anti-colonial studies, and jazz composition. I am currently a social science Post-Doctoral researcher on a National Science Foundation grant at the University of Idaho with Dr. Tara Hudiburg & Dr. Kristin Haltinner focused on studying the barriers on rural communities from adopting climate-minded land management strategies with a focus on centering local tribal voices and knowledges.
In January 2026, I will be joining the University of Cincinnati’s School of Environment & Sustainability mentored by Dr. Laura Zanotti & Dr. Amy Townsend-Small a part of the Charles Turner Post-Doctoral Scholar Program and I am thrilled to be returning to the plants, places, and peoples in and around the Appalachian region to explore more questions around the climate crisis and how best we can strive for collective climate liberation using community methods and creative, arts-based approaches!
Beyond the academia, I enjoy community organizing and direct action around food, climate, and prison justice with a wide variety of local groups.
Contact Information
koen2388 [at] vandals.uidaho.edu
Land Acknowledgement & Beyond
The University of Idaho in Moscow resides on the ancestral homelands of the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce), Palus, and Schitsu’umsh (Coeur d’Alene) peoples. Through my research and teaching, I work to extend gratitude to the Indigenous communities that have called and continue to call these lands home since time immemorial. In the classroom and research questions I explore, I further work to push beyond the often static land acknowledgment through foregrounding indigenous ways of knowing, anticolonial sciences, marginalized climate activists (especially tribal and indigenous activists), reading texts written and produced by indigenous people and communities, building relationships with tribal members, foregrounding tribal voices and forms of relation/valuing of land in the curricula, resisting and rejecting extractive practices of knowledge consumption and production, and, finally, valuing pluralistic ideations of climate futures.
Nick Koenig 