Assistant Professor
Biography: Dr. Kirk is a political ecologist interested in how agriculture has been used as a tool of settler-colonial dispossession and of anti-colonial resistance. She is writing a monograph book on this research topic. She has conducted field research in Palestine, focused in the Jenin governorate of the northern Occupied West Bank. She also studies the historical arc of agrarian change and colonial and imperial agricultural science, drawing on archives in California, New York, London, Jerusalem, Ramallah, and more. She came to her research and scholar-activists interests as an undergraduate student and has been active as a Jewish member of various Palestine solidarity organizations for nearly fifteen years. She has also written about feminist criticisms of militarisms, with a focus on how everyday technologies and landscapes may have violent structures “hidden in plain site.” Her work has been published in Journal of Political Ecology, Historical Geography, Society and Space, and Historical Materialism, as well as several edited volumes and popular media outlets. Having grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area, when she’s not teaching or writing, she enjoys spending time outdoors with her family hiking, biking, birdwatching, or swimming in rivers. When it’s rainy (most of the year), she stays inside baking and watching movies. She is proud to say she has seen over 150 different teen movies and romantic comedies. You can learn more about her at her website: https://www.gabikirk.com/
Political ecology, feminist geography, Palestine-Israel, geographies of settler colonialism, Indigenous geography, agroecology and food sovereignty.
GEOG 100
GEOG 105 Human Geography
GEOG 310L Geographic Research Laboratory
GEOG/HIST 319 Emergence of the Modern Middle East
GEOG 322 California Geography
GEOG/PSCI 365 Political Ecology
GEOG 411 Senior Field Research