Meryl Shriver-Rice, Ph.D., R.P.A
Meryl Shriver-Rice is the author of Decolonial Approaches to Data Ethics and Re-Storying: From Biocultural Landscapes at Risk to Archiving the Dead (with Sarah Hiepler-Basty, 2026). She is a Visiting Professor of Decolonial Studies at Rollins College and Founding Director of the Coastal Heritage at Risk Taskforce (CHART). Prior to joining Rollins, she was the Head of Research for the Seminole Tribe of Florida at the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum and the Director of Research for the Institute of American Indian Studies (IAIS) where she oversaw NAGPRA efforts. She is also an Affiliated Researcher with Florida State University's Native American and Indigenous Studies Center (NAIS Center).
Prior to taking a role with the Seminole Tribe of Florida, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University. From 2016-2024 as Director of Environmental Media she designed and directed the Master's program in Environment, Culture and Media at the University of Miami.
She is an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist and archaeologist with expertise in decolonial ethics, environmental media, ethnobiology, public anthropology, environmental justice, decolonial media and re-storying, and community-based participatory research.
Her research focuses on how diverse human-environment interactions reveal the ways that people understand, value, and relate to other species and their surrounding environments. In particular, her research has examined how sociocultural concepts of belonging and heritage are historically grounded and entangled with ecological knowledge, inter-generational experiences with landscape, and environmental management strategies.
CURRENT RESEARCH
She is principal investigator (PI) of
1. Endangered Inter-generational Knowledge and Practice for Black Seminole Descendants of Andros island
With Dr. Brittany Brown, Dr. Grace Turner, Sara Ayers-Rigsby, and Dr. Karen Herrero-Backe.
In partnership with the Antiquities, Monuments, and Museums Corporation, the national museum of The Bahamas and The Bahamas Ministry of Education
The British Museum's Endangered Material Knowledge Programme grant
2. Visual Interventions and the Climate Crisis: Researching Environmental Justice through Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Climate Impacts in Seggiano, Italy
With co-I Dr. Hunter Vaughan. Participatory Research Program grant, University of Cambridge
3. Untold Stories at Risk: Coastal Heritage, Site Risk Assessment, and Educational Outreach
This decolonial public media project examines Black, Indigenous, and Latinx histories as part of the Coastal Heritage at Risk Taskforce (CHART). ULINK Laboratory for Integrative Knowledge grant
4. Heritage, Wind, and Power: Community-Based Participatory Research in Killala, Ireland
In partnership with May Valley Resources and Dr. Hunter Vaughan.
PUBLIC EVENTS:
1. Research Ethic Workshop on Working with Indigenous Communities
(with Bill Locascio, Dave Scheidecker, and Joseph Gilbert on behalf of STOF THPO and ATTK) at Florida State University's Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies and Florida International University's Global Indigenous Forum, 2026.
2. Centering Indigenous Knowledge: Indigneous-Led Education for Non-Indigenous Publics
(with Wunneanatsu Lamb-Cason, Rose Taylor, Richard Cowes, Phillip Mendenhall, and Vera Longbow Sheehan) Annual Roundtable for the Institute for American Indian Studies Museum, 2025.
3. Climate and Energy: Human Dimensions and Environmental Communications
(with J.T. Roane, Kevin Rhiney, Atif Akin, Danielle Falzon, and Natalie Romero)
Rutgers University, Climate and Energy Institute, 2025.
Her current book Decolonial Approaches to Data Ethics and Re-Storying: From Biocultural Landscapes at Risk to Archiving the Dead (with anthropologist Sarah Hiepler-Basty, Wiley Blackwell, 2026) examines decolonial approaches to digital data use and re-storying interventions within heritage storytelling, wildlife conservation efforts, community-based outreach, museum and park archival strategies and interpretation, data sovereignty efforts, and public exhibition of ancestors.
INTERDISCIPLINARY BACKGROUND
From 2016-2024 she taught only graduate students in environmental studies at the University of Miami. She has advised master’s and doctoral students in interdisciplinary environmental social science research across such various disciplines as ethnobiology, Indigenous studies, decolonial climate resilience strategies, shark science, ecology, biogeography, ethnobotany, historical ecology, decolonial ethics, and marine science at the Center for Ecosystem Science & Policy.
Dr. Shriver-Rice has served as a grant reviewer for Cultural and Community Resilience panel (CCR) for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), served on the faculty working group that founded the Native American and Global Indigenous Studies (NAGIS) program at UMiami, is a member of Allying for Diversity and Inclusion in Ethnobiology (ADIE) which has brought together multiple academic societies (Society for Ethnobiology, Society for Ethnobotany, International Society for Ethnobiology) to discuss decolonial methodologies and ethical data practices, the North American Heritage at Risk project (NAHAR), and served as an interdisciplinary social scientist on the grant board of the Independent Research Fund Denmark for 'Green Research' (DFF).
She is co-founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Environmental Media (2018-2021, with Hunter Vaughan) which bridges work in environmental studies, climate justice, and science communication focusing on the role of new and emerging digital media in our understanding and perception of the environment. From 2021-2024 she co-directed the PXP Project (with Gregory Warden) which combines historical ecology and local indicators of climate change studies with archaeological excavation as part of an interdisciplinary regional landscape study of the Seggiano basin in Tuscany. She also serves on the Miami-Dade Vulnerability Assessment Working Group that is charged with ranking archaeological sites by risk of climate impacts.
Research Interests:
Indigenous Futures, Decolonial media, Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), Ethnobiology, Anthropological approaches to environmental restoration, Environmental media, Decolonial conservation, Historical ecology, Data sovereignty and ethics, Rewilding strategies, Environmental justice, Decolonizing practices by museums and parks, Deep-time enchantment, Local Environmental Knowledge (LEK), Archaeobotany, Applied ethics in interdisciplinary environmental social science methods, Epistemic justice, Ethnoecological methods, Role of environmental archaeology in contemporary conservation.
Courses taught
Human Ecology, Rutgers University
11:374:250 Environmental Justice
11:374:101 Introduction to Human Ecology
Abess Center for Ecosystem Science & Policy, University of Miami
Graduate-level
ECS 601 Environmental Research Methods
ECS 603 Environmental Interdisciplinary Methods
ECS 609 Contemporary Media Representations of the Environment*
ECS 610 Technology and Human Behavior*
ECS 611 Nature, the Anthropocene, and Visual Culture*
ECS 612 Environmental Justice & Storytelling*
ECS 612 Environmental Communication, New Media & Policy
ECS 790 Decolonial and Indigenous-Led Conservation
ECS 790 Decolonial Social Science Methods
ECS 790 Directed Readings in Environmental Archaeology
ECS 790 Directed Readings in Anthropology and Environmental Media
ECS 790 Directed Readings in Focus Group/Oral History Methods
ECS 790 Directed Readings in Community-Based Participatory Research
ECS 790 Environmental Field Methods
Faculty advisor for JUSTETHICS Graduate Student Workshop in decolonial ethics and social science mixed methods
Environmental Studies, Franklin University Switzerland
EVS 580 Biodiversity & Heritage
EVS 320 Science, Media, & Storytelling
*Included in the Native American and Global Indigenous Studies (NAGIS) program