Dr Maya Trotz will deliver the feature address at the upcoming “Gender on the Frontlines” Feminist Conference which is centered on the interconnected themes of gender, health, and the environment. The conference which is being held on under the theme “Roles, Risks and Urgency in a Changing Environment” – is being organised by Tamùkke Feminists  in partnership with the University of Guyana’s Institute of Gender Studies and will be held on August 17th-18th at the University of Guyana’s Education Lecture Theatre (ELT), Turkeyen campus.

Dr Trotz is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida. Her work fosters convergence research around various natural and built infrastructures with and within coastal communities. Dr Trotz who is the Principal Investigator of a National Science Coastlines and People Project – Strong Coasts, which focuses on solutions with nature and people with sites in Belize, Miami and the US Virgin Islands also co-directs BlueGap, a NSF Blue Economy Convergence Accelerator Project that helps communities build awareness and fight to reduce nitrogen pollution as well as co-creating knowledge with communities and combining stories with data for action.

“Drawing from my work on the relationships communities have with water in the United States and the Caribbean, I want to reframe how we think about care,” Dr Trotz said in an invited comment, “caregivers notice changes first. They track exposure before systems do. They hold knowledge that can save lives and ecosystems,” she pointed out. Dr Trotz in inviting participation in this conference asks that “we stop treating care as background work and start recognizing it as advanced environmental intelligence.”