Adrian Cato (She/They)Ph.D. Student (2022 Cohort)

Adrian Cato earned a BA in Environmental Science & Policy with a certificate in Marine Science & Conservation from Duke University. She has a MA in Marine Affairs from the University of Rhode Island, where she completed a thesis titled, Reclaiming Black and Indigenous Ecologies on Block Island through Oral History and Ethnography, as part of a long-term community-centered effort to recenter Black and Indigenous peoples in maritime public memory. Adrian intends to focus her dissertation on the Eastern oyster and its deeply held connections to African American coastal legacies in the Southeastern United States. She is invested in complex narratives that present the duality of the ocean, as a site of historical trauma for the African Diaspora and a place of Black liberation and multi-species kinship. Her work is informed by Black Ecofeminist thought, Black ecologies, and critical geographies.