Dr. Rosemary Aviste is a new post-doc researcher at the CORE Lab! She received her PhD in Social Psychology from Penn State in 2025. She is interested in how knowledge systems and worldviews shape the ways people understand, value, and form relationships with nature, and how these frameworks appear in educational experiences and environmental science research. She hopes to use her past research on animacy and reciprocal relations to nature to help inform new and current projects in the CORE Lab.
We are thrilled to have her in the Lab and look forward to her many contributions! Read on to learn more about Dr. Aviste, her reason for choosing the CORE Lab, and the ‘why’ behind her research.
Tell me a little bit about yourself and your work.
I started getting interested in the environment when I was very young, I always had a strong attachment to nature and place. And that has really influenced me going into the environmental field. I did some environmental initiatives in high school, and then in undergrad I continued that, working with community engagement, urban agriculture and environmental justice organizations.
I went to the University of Rochester for my undergrad, that’s in western New York. Then I went to Penn State for grad school, got into a PhD program with Dr. Janet Swim’s environmental lab, and I continued to refine my ideas. That’s where I really got interested in worldviews and trying to think about different non-Western ways of being. Also, critiquing the Western dominance in natural science and the social sciences.
I took an Environmental Humanities minor during undergrad, and I realized from reading and talking to people that I could combine my interest in Psychology with the environment, so that’s what led me to Environmental Psychology! I have learned a lot from my humanities education. It helped me develop my theories and the topics for my research. And then, my psychology background brought the methodological and analytical tools to then study human attitudes and behavior.
Why did you choose the CORE Lab?
Reading the description for the position and the kind of research I’d be doing as a postdoc, it was a perfect marriage between my current research and the research I was really passionate about in grad school. My master’s work was on animacy beliefs and reciprocal relationships with nature, so, kind of human exceptionalism which underpins part of animacy. And then my dissertation, working with scientists in Alaska explored how scientists’ education impacts their ability to collaborate with people of different worldviews. I saw that all fitting into the CORE Lab and the work that’s already being done here.
A week and a half in, what are your initial impressions of the lab?
Everyone is seriously so nice. Nothing but welcoming energy and kind energy from everyone, so that’s a great sign. For me, lab culture is really important. You can’t do good work if you’re miserable!
The more that I’ve talked with grad students about their individual projects, the more I get excited, because I just see so many ways in which my past work has touched on those topics or there are topics that I’m interested in exploring as well. I can see myself joining in on projects with any one of the grad students. It’s kind of an invigorating feeling, just knowing that you are in a space where you can contribute.
I wanted to follow up and talk about the blend of social sciences and humanities in your work, why are the humanities important in scientific research?
Science is all about asking questions and our job as researchers is to ask questions. And the entire field of humanities is based around questioning things. It’s just, like, thinking deeply, questioning norms, questioning what we think we know, and using unconventional ways of doing that. So, not just collecting data but also looking at art, literature, and how things appear across different cultures. Which is something that is not common in social sciences and certainly not in natural sciences. The humanities bring in another set of tools, and I find that critical theories and alternative methods begin in the humanities and ‘trickle-down’ into the social/natural sciences. If the critical work happening in the humanities is brought into the social sciences and natural sciences quicker, I think that would benefit everyone.
Rosemary and her partner throughout the years!
If you could tell the public one thing based on your research up until this point, what would you tell them?
Question your perceptions of the world. So, thinking about questions like, what is knowledge? What is expertise? What is nature? How do we define data? All these fundamental questions where you think oh, those are questions with factual answers. Question whether or not that’s true. Is there Fact? Or Truth?
Is there one Truth? Because I don’t think there is.
And then also, can you change your perceptions and what does that mean?
What is your ‘why?’
The overall ‘why’ is to alleviate as much suffering in the world as possible. I see nature suffering, I see the people suffering, and I truly believe that creating human-nature partnerships is one way to alleviate some of that. The key word there is ‘partnership’. You know, we’re not saviors. This idea that we are superior is faulty, I think that Nature knows a lot more than we do on a lot of different things. We know things that nature doesn’t, nature knows things that we don’t, and I think coming together in a partnership is kind of the goal.
Who’s your Role Model?
One of them is my high school human geography teacher. He is a really amazing person, and he started a sustainability initiative that I joined. We built big composters and started composting for the high school. Two days a week, we would stay after school and hand-sort food waste to get rid of contaminants. It was messy, it was stinky, but it was all hands on deck, feet on the ground kind of work. And that was really meaningful.
We ended up using the food waste, that compost, to grow gardens to grow food for the kitchen. So then the cafeteria was making our lunches using the food that we grew from the compost that we created. So yeah, I think he just did stuff. He found a way to make it work, he created systems and was just really cool. I think that was really impactful to me, and what led me to realize that I could take my love for nature and do something productive with it.
What 3 books would you assign as required reading for a college Environmental Humanities class?
Reinventing Eden – Carolyn Merchant Braiding Sweetgrass – Robin Wall Kimmerer. Who’s Asking? – Douglas Medin & Megan Bang
What do you want to be remembered for?
Being kind. I don’t have a strong desire to leave a professional legacy or be known for awards or anything like that. I think I just want to be known as a good person. I think that’s more important. Just being kind to people and building good relationships.