Eden Van Saun
They/Them
I am queer and nonbinary and I am a marine science educator.//
I studied physics, math, ecology and Central American epistemologies around space and time as an undergraduate. I presently research educational science and place-based methodology as a Masters’ student at the University of Washington. In the Pacific Northwest, the Yucatan peninsula, and Baja California, I have conducted field research on Indigenous cosmogeny and physical eschatology, reef health and monitoring, and human-modified riparian ecosystems. Teaching in Seattle, I currently collaborate with the Suquamish Tribe on a field-research partnership with my students. My pedagogy revolves around place-based learning, climate justice, and alternate ways of knowledge transmission. In my free time I enjoy tidepooling and sailing with my partner.
Being a queer educator has been one of the most challenging and rewarding parts of my career so far. Growing up in a conservative Californian (not an oxymoron lol) city, I had little exposure to what science could be for me, let alone diversity in ‘who was allowed’ to do science. High school science killed some of my curiosity, memorizing the names of white aristocratic men and doing labs on distant “problems” while Central California had so much science right there: the water projects, the destruction of the local ecosystems, the agricultural impacts on human environments and society, and the climate impacts distributed unequally across populations and communities.
To be able to expand for my students the idea of what science actually means––asking questions about the world around us, and working together to come up with ideas and solutions for complex problems––while as an openly queer educator, I hope to show my students, particularly the queer or otherwise marginalized ones, that science is for them, too.