Donal Thomas, Past Chair (2025-2026)

Email: donal.thomas@stonybrook.edu

Donal Thomas is the immediate past Chair of the Early Career Caucus and serves as an ex officio voting member of ASEH's Executive Council. In this role, he is committed to connecting early-career scholars with ASEH and various initiatives to support their professional and academic lives.

Donal is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at Stony Brook University, where he specializes in environmental history with a focus on global Indigenous histories, knowledge transfer, science, medicine, and borderlands. He currently serves as the Graduate Student Advocate at Stony Brook University. He is the co-founder of Crisis and Catharsis, a digital humanities initiative. 

Ariel Schnee, University of Oklahoma, Fundraising

Ariel Schnee is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in American History at the University of Oklahoma; she holds a master's degree in public history from Colorado State University. Her forthcoming dissertation on the urban environmental history of Detroit contemplates the ways in which Detroiters, at varied moments in history, used nature to imagine their city's past, navigate the issues of their present, and imagine what the city's future might hold. Her public history projects have included oral histories, historic preservation work, award-winning history curriculum development, interactive digital maps, and cultural resources management planning for western public lands and national parks. She is the past managing editor and current book review assistant editor of the award-winning quarterly, the Journal of Women's History.

Hailey Doucette, University of Kansas, Chair (2026-2027)

Hailey Doucette received her B.A. in History and M.A. in History from Colorado State University where she studied wild horse history and management, copper mining in Arizona, and public history. At KU, Hailey is pursuing her Ph.D. in History, and is working as the Graduate Assistant for the Western History Association. She is studying the production of Cold War weapons in the Denver area. Doucette is examining the politics of growth in Denver alongside the environmental movement and the fight against pollution from Cold War weapons production facilities in the region. She argues that the end of the Cold War, not activism, led to the closure of both plants. However, environmental groups' efforts to preserve more open space led the federal government to convert both landscapes into National Wildlife Refuges —an attempt to hide the pollution created by Cold War weapons production. In her free time, she is running, climbing, or skiing in the Rocky Mountains and finding live music to enjoy.

Trevor Egerton is ASEH-ECC’s Chair-Elect. He will transition into the role of Chair following the ASEH 2027 Annual Conference in Richmond, Virginia. Trevor is a PhD candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder and works with ASEH President-Elect Paul Sutter. He served as the ECC Mentorship Coordinator this past year and have presented at ASEH for each of the past three years. As chair-elect, his primary role will be to support ECC Chair Hailey Doucette in her activity as chair and ensure that the ECC and our events run smoothly.

Outside of ASEH, Trevor served a term as president of CU’s History Graduate Student Association, among numerous other service positions. He worked as a research fellow for the Colorado Black Equity Study for the past academic year, helping produce a report on Black outdoor recreation in the state and conduct considerable archival research on the state’s educational history. His dissertation research focuses on the intersections between racial segregation and outdoor recreation in the American South from the New Deal to the mid-1960s. In particular, he examines African American outdoor recreation at segregated southern state parks, seeing what these parks illuminate about the connections between the rise of outdoor recreation and the Civil Rights Movement. When he isn’t working on his dissertation, Trevor can be found with a pack on his back somewhere in the Colorado backcountry.

Nolan Reynolds, University of Kansas, Conference Coordinator

Nolan Reynolds is the Conference Coordinator for the ASEH Early Career Caucus. His role focuses on organizing social outings and networking opportunities for the Early Career Caucus during the ASEH Conference. Nolan is a historian of the environment, science and technology, and the American West. His research examines how nuclear fallout, public-health activism, and citizen science transformed American environmentalism and challenged the authority of the Cold War national-security state. His emerging dissertation explores atomic landscapes in the American West and the ways scientific expertise, technological systems, and state power reshaped bodies and environments.

Evan Lott, University of Kansas, Mentorship Coordinator

Evan Lott is the ECC Mentorship Coordinator. His role focuses on connecting environmental historians at different stages in their careers by building and strengthening scholarly communitywithin the ASEH.

Evan is a PhD candidate at the University of Kansas where he specializes in American environmental, US West, and Indigenous history. His dissertation uncovers the history of the Callery pear tree in the United States over the course of the twentieth century.

Holly Rosewood, Washington University, Communications and Outreach Coordinator

Holly Rosewood (she/they) builds community and keeps members connected as the ASEH Early Career Caucus' Communications and Outreach Coordinator. Rosewood is a PhD candidate in Washington University's Department of History, where she studies the intersection of United States labor and environment. Their research examines knowledge systems developed by nineteenth and twentieth century levee workers in the Mississippi River Valley.

Amy Haines, University of Colorado, Boulder, DEI

Hi! I’m Amy Renee Haines, and I am a PhD candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder, studying with Phoebe Young. My work in environmental history sits at the intersections of material and visual culture, urban spaces, identity and memory. My in-progress dissertation about Pueblo, Colorado explores identity and placemaking through the politics of memory evidenced through official and unofficial modes like art, maps, photography, architecture, high-and low-culture, urban design, and vernacular landscapes. Prior to my work at CU Boulder, I earned a B.A. and M.A. in History from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs and taught as a lecturer there for the departments of History, Theater and Dance, and for the Compass Curriculum and Humanities programs. When not researching and writing, I love spending time with friends, my family and my dog, knitting anything and everything, and dreaming up ways to use my new cast iron cookware.

As your DEI Coordinator, my goal is to advocate for members of the ECC and help seek out resources that will aid in creating an environment that fosters innovation, increases engagement, maintains ethical standards, and provides social justice and equal access so that members’ needs are respected, and we are all able to participate and contribute fully to the annual meeting. I hope to serve ECC members in a capacity that builds upon the work of CODIE and reinforces the ECC’s and ASEH’s collective commitment to the principles and functional necessity of a diverse, equitable, and inclusive conference.