Emma Soberano

I am the managing editor for Spark Magazine, from the Bowman Center at the University of Michigan. Spark publishes timely, research-informed essays on historical and current social issues. Our essays are meant to spark curiosity — whether by encouraging deeper questions about society, challenging taken-for-granted ideas, or inspiring greater empathy and support for marginalized communities.

I also serve as a Learning Experience Designer for the CASCaDE (Change Agents Shaping Campus Diversity and Equity) Project at the Bowman Center. In this role, I work with subject matter experts to create engaging, approachable resources for equity-minded leadership empowerment of higher education professionals. I use ideas and research from diversity scholarship to create digital learning experiences that will help change agents transform higher education.

I recently finished my doctoral studies at the department of English Language & Literature at the University of Michigan. My research is interdisciplinary, and focuses on race, colonialism, and ecological knowledge and management practices in nineteenth-century British literature, and in Neo-Victorian novels. Recently, I successfully defended my dissertation, titled “Racialized Ecologies and the Literary Afterlives of the British Empire.” I have designed and taught undergraduate courses ranging from first-year writing to an upper-level course on literature and the environment.

I am based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I live with my partner and our two cats. In my spare time I enjoy baking, hiking, rock climbing, and creative writing.