We are delighted to announce the new members to the NiCHE team for 2025! Jessica van Horssen is joining the executive team for a three-year term. And Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles, Mary Baxter, and Jesse Ritner are all joining The Otter editorial board. Read more about each of them below.

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New Executive Member

Jessica van Horssen

Jessica van Horssen (she/her) is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at McMaster University. A historian of environmental health and contamination, Jessica specializes in the reciprocal relationship between land and bodies. Her first monograph, A Town Called Asbestos (2016) details the complex history of the community of Asbestos, Quebec (now Val-des-sources), once the site of the world’s largest opencast chrysotile asbestos mine. She is a co-investigator on the Mining Danger SSHRC Insight Grant project and is continuing her work on asbestos and community health through this project. She is also working on a new project exploring histories of plastic simulations of the natural world as a form of “augmented nature.” Firmly committed to disseminating academic research beyond the paywalls of academia, Jessica prioritizes public-facing and public-engaging projects that showcase her academic research in creative and fun ways. This has included a companion graphic novel to her first monograph, a short series for NiCHE’s EHTV, and hopefully, one day, and asbestos pub opera.

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New Otter Blog Editorial Board Members

Mary Baxter

Mary Baxter, is a PhD candidate in The Department of History at Western University and a journalist and editor who specializes in agriculture and southwestern Ontario issues. In 2024, her Master’s history thesis on sand and gravel mining in the Western Lake Erie basin won the Canadian Studies Network- Réseau d’études canadiennes Best MA (or Equivalent) Thesis or Major Research Paper category. She is keenly interested in transnational and comparative histories of the Great Lakes and plans to focus her doctoral research on the history of oil and gas extraction in this region. Another central area of interest is the history of information in the digital age, focusing on how we identify, value, view, and handle public information. Her work at both the Master’s and PhD levels at Western University has been supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council scholarships. Her work in journalism has been widely recognized at the provincial, national, and international levels, including by the Canadian Association of Journalists in 2007, the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists in 2012, and, in 2024, by the Canadian Online Publishing Awards. Mary also writes fiction and is working on an eco-thriller novel.

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Jesse Ritner

Dr. Jesse Ritner is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His research centers on the intersections of global warming, climate adaptation, and climate justice following the end of World War II. Dr. Ritner is currently working on a book titled Snowguns: How Snowmaking, Carbon Emissions, and Cheap Labor Built the United States Ski Industry, where he traces how the ski industry built itself around climate adaptation long before global warming began impacting the industry. In the process, he argues that the impacts of skiing on economy, ecology, and community offer insights into the potential effects of future adaptation strategies. Dr. Ritner is firmly committed to spreading academic research in accessible and engaging ways. Along with writing for an array of newspapers, magazines, and blogs, he has also worked as the assistant editor for the history blog Not Even Past and as a historical consultant for the Civil Conversation Project. 

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Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles

Dr. Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe) is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria. Their research centres on Indigenous cultural and political responses to climate change, and spatial networks of human/more than human relationships. At UVic, Dr. Smiles serves as the director of the Geographic Indigenous Futures Collaboratory, a research group focused on Indigenous geographies and community relationships. Dr. Smiles serves in a number of leadership roles within Indigenous geographies and Indigenous sciences more broadly, including serving as co-chair of the Indigenous Peoples’ Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers, serving on the executive council of the Canadian Association of Geographers, and as an editor for organizations and publications such as NiCHE, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Turtle Island Journal of Indigenous Health, and the Journal of Environmental Science and Studies.