We invite you to join us for a talk with locally based UW Professor Rebekah Minarchek for an engaging discussion about mushrooms through the lens of an environmental sociologist, particularly exploring how we as humans connect to, impact, and are impacted by the environment all around us.

How do mushrooms highlight and connect to social systems? How can we use mushrooms as a lens to think about social and environmental issues in our world? We will discuss sociological connections to the use of mushrooms for medicinal, recreational, nutritional, and religious purposes and look at current research on human history and mushroom use. We'll also discuss the concept of uneven risk and access to natural resources for different communities and how we might think about equalizing access in the future, especially in connection to psilocybe mushrooms.

Rebakah Daro Minarchek is an Environmental Sociologist. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2019 for her work on land rights, food systems, and community natural resource access. She has worked as a curriculum designer for the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) on topics of agriculture development with particular emphasis on gender and development. She is currently an Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Washington in Integrated Social Sciences and International Studies, where she teaches the classes Political Ecology of the World Food System, Social Science Research Methods, Social Science Theory, and Social Mycology.