Plenary Speaker

Dr. Jacquelyn Gill

University of Maine's Climate Change Institute
Director of the BEAST Lab
(Biodiversity and Environments Across Space and Time)
Jacquelyn is an associate professor of paleoecology at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute. She is a paleoecologist and biogeographer, bringing the perspectives of space and time to bear on questions in ecology and global change science. Her work takes a community ecology approach to help understand how species and their interactions have responded to interacting drivers (like climate change and extinction) through time.

She directs the BEAST Lab, which investigates 1) the legacies “biotic upheavals” like the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna on vegetation, 2) biotic interactions and drivers of landscape change on large spatiotemporal scales, 3) plant range dynamics and vulnerability to climate change, and 5) what paleoecology, Indigenous archaeology, and Traditional Ecological Knowledges can tell us about human-environment interactions in the past.

She is a co-host of the podcast Warm Regards and author of the blog “The Contemplative Mammoth”, welcoming conversations and advice on science, early career academia, and diversity in STEM. She is a co-founder of the March for Science and a 2020 recipient of NCSE’s Friend of the Planet award.