Rachel Arney

Dr. Rachel Arney is an interdisciplinary geographer interested in understanding the production of environmental and scientific knowledge in political spaces. Her dissertation research examined how a reconfiguration of settler colonial state power has allowed for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to emerge as a new environmental actor within protected places in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. She investigates how knowledge about the environment is used in ways that reinforce socio-environmental harms and how this knowledge is produced and codified in institutional documents.

Prior to joining Georgia State University as a visiting lecturer in January 2025, she earned her PhD in Integrative Conservation & Geography from the University of Georgia. Originally from Arizona, Dr. Arney spent a majority of her career as a marine ecologist living and working along the Gulf coast and Caribbean on sea turtle research. She has since moved into social science as a way to more fully engage with the social and political aspects of ecology and conservation.