Zachary Cudney

Zach is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of Washington in Seattle. His research contributes to the fields of cultural geography, STS (science and technology studies), and the environmental humanities. Broadly speaking, he is interested in practices of representation and remembrance, their social and political consequences, and their relationships to space, landscape, and the environment.

Combining these themes, Zach's dissertation looks at the geographies of memory in the Norwegian Arctic. He studies the Arctic World Archive in Svalbard alongside a number of other sites—ranging from memory institutions to data centers—which preserve cultural heritage and digital data. He is interested in the way these sites make strategic use of their icy environments while addressing wider concerns about the global climate.

Originally from Springville, New York—a village in the snow belt south of Buffalo, Zach earned his BA and MA from the University at Albany, SUNY. He then lived in Nashville for several years, where he taught at Nashville State Community College and worked at the Tennessee State Library and Archives. He enjoys long walks, cross-country skiing, summer porch sits, drives through the desert, minimalist music, and his two cats.