GeoTalk: Meet glacial hauntologist, Elizabeth Case

Welcome to GeoTalk, Elizabeth! Could you introduce yourself and your background?

I’m a genderfluid glaciologist living between previously glaciated, currently glaciated, and flood-prone landscapes. I am a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. I did my bachelor’s in physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and my Ph.D. in glacial geophysics at Columbia University in New York.

I am also a writer and an artist. I started university as a communications major. I worked, variously, at the dining hall and at a board game company, and as a camp counselor. Like many, I spent my early career exploring paths, from environmental journalism and early Ph.D. work to various interests in between. What emerged from that exploration was the emergence of my current specialization: glaciology.

I have always had myriad interests, and I have never wanted to disentangle writing or reading or art from my scientific work (or vice versa)—the most generative place for me is doing them all together.

Alongside glaciology, your research interrogates glacial hauntologies through the union of science and art. What is hauntology?

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