Margaret Tebbe is a cultural anthropologist specializing in the study of children’s cultures and knowledge, schools as sites of environmental justice and injustice, and critical mapping practices.
On the Disaster-STS Network research platform, Margaret leads the California Central Valley Research Group, and is involved in the EcoEd Design Group and the Environmental Justice Global Record project.
Currently (2024), Margaret is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. where she is studying the ways that children’s environmental knowledge is shaped by socioecological contexts and educational programs. Her dissertation will focus on schools in California’s San Joaquin Valley.
In 2021, she received a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied school choice and student experience at neighborhood public schools in Philadelphia. In 2023, she received a Master of Arts in Sociology from the University of California, Irvine. Throughout her time as a student, she has worked in various educational programs, including upper elementary and middle school orchestral music teaching, lower elementary summer camps, and university courses on anthropology, environmental justice, urban studies, education, and music.
Margaret was born in Indiana to a farm family, raised in South Carolina in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, then moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to attend college. She has lived in Irvine, California since 2021.
Margaret has been a member of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) since 2022 and of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) since 2024.
Since 2019, Margaret has been involved with many advocacy campaigns focused on schools, including around the School District of Philadelphia’s Comprehensive School Planning Review process, safe school facilities, and school greening in Los Angeles. She is also co-PI on a project developing 11th and 12th grade curricula on climate change and environmental justice for the state of California.
Margaret’s portfolio of interactive online maps is available here.
Last updated April 2024.
