Dr. Jonathan Hall, West Virginia University

Dr. Jonathan Hall is an ecologist, educator, writer, podcast producer, and wilderness enthusiast based in Morgantown, West Virginia. Currently he is the director of the Wilderness Geography Lab and an Assistant Professor of Geography at West Virginia University. His research and teaching centers around critical wildlife geographies and conservation, where he integrates the disciplines of Black and Indigenous geographies, ecology, political ecology, and conservation to solve environmental problems.

A consistent practice throughout Dr. Hall’s life has been building relations with non-human beings through a variety of activities spent in the non-human constructed world. Whether he was learning about biogeography watching Nature on PBS or through his matriculation to Eagle Scout (Dr. Hall does not support or endorse the Boy Scouts of America) he has tried to feed his curiosity for the natural world. In 2005, he graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA with a B.S. in Biology and a focus on Environmental Studies. Six years later Dr. Hall earned a Ph.D. in Ecology from the Ohio State University, becoming the first African American to graduate with a doctorate in ecology from OSU. Dr. Hall’s dissertation research focused on the intersection of culture, primarily the Bishnoi people, and non-human species conservation in rural Rajasthan, India. Currently he is working on a number of research projects involving California condor conservation, wild food provisioning and food systems, and racial ecologies.

In all of his work, Dr. Hall seeks to center the realities of people of color, particularly Black people, within the physical sciences as a tool for building towards a more just and ecologically sustainable human existence.