Hello and thank you for visiting my portfolio. My name is Richard James, and I’m a student in the Integrated Social Sciences program at the University of Washington. This site represents my academic journey through the ISS curriculum and is a curated space for engaging with emotional geographies, ecological-devastation storytelling, and interdisciplinary reflection.

Throughout my studies, I’ve focused on the keyword environmentalism, describing the failures of the environmental movement, the keyword deforestation, and it's devastating affects from proceeding unimpeded, and the emotional and societal impact of the keyword eco-melancholy. These themes have shaped, not only my academic interests, but also my personal understanding of the world, especially as I’ve come to recognize the deep emotional toll of climate change and ecological loss.

My path to this program has been shaped by a love of nature, a career in IT and a return to higher education driven by a desire to better understand the systems and stories that shape our lives. I chose the ISS program out of a desire to set an example for my daughters, be a better and more informed member of my community, and for the program's interdisciplinary nature and capacity to connect personal experience with broader social and environmental frameworks. This portfolio reflects an evolution of thought, where academic rigor replaces hope with resilience, and resolution with emotional honesty. It embodies a synthesis, where emotional truth and academic rigor are not in conflict, but in conversation.

The devastating effects of climate change are not just scientific facts or policy debates, but are lived experiences, felt deeply by communities and individuals across the globe. Through this portfolio, I’ve explored how grief, memory, and place intersect with ecological awareness, and how storytelling can be a method of both mourning and meaning-making.

Much of what I’ve studied in the ISS program has helped me articulate my feeling that emotional responses to environmental degradation are valid, and that scholarship can and should create space for those responses. By focusing on eco-melancholy and emotional geographies, I’ve come to see how interdisciplinary inquiry can illuminate the invisible threads between personal loss and planetary change.

This site is designed to be accessible and inclusive. All images include descriptive alt text for audio readers to describe content. Whether you are an instructor, a peer, or simply someone curious about the emotional dimensions of environmental scholarship, I invite you to explore the work and reflections that have shaped my time in the ISS program.