Meg Perry was born and grew up in North Carolina and holds a BA in Biology from Swarthmore College. She worked on a small vegetable farm in Pennsylvania, as a 9th-grade science teacher, and as a Fulbright U.S. Student Researcher studying endangered river turtles in Malaysia before coming to Duke. As a Master of Environmental Management candidate in the Nicholas School of the Environment, she studied the dynamics and management of rivers as socio-ecological systems. In the Basurto lab, she helped build the global small-scale fisheries database. Her master’s project pilots backcasting as an emerging technique for collaborative strategic planning in large river basins. Her academic interests include river ecology, adaptive governance, political hydrology, resilience, and community-based approaches to conservation. She also continues to explore ways that dance, poetry, and other art forms reflect and inform humans’ relationship to “the environment.”