Researchers

Adelheid Fischer is a literary nonfiction writer who focuses on natural history, ecology and the intersections of nature and culture. Her poems, essays and articles have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including Utne Reader, Orion, Creative Nonfiction, Conservation, Places and Arizona Highways. She is the coauthor of Valley of Grass: Tallgrass Prairie and Parkland of the Red River Region and North Shore: A Natural History of Minnesota’s Superior Coast. A selection of her natural history columns for the online publication Zygote Quarterly appeared in the 2017 book Science of Seeing. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants including a Minnesota Book Award and the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award as well as grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

As an Affiliate Global Futures Scholar in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and former educator and administrator at Arizona State University, Fischer also initiated several biomimicry-based projects including “Designed to Move: Seeds That Float, Fly or Hitchhike through the Desert Southwest,” an exhibition of macrophotography that explored the beauty and functional diversity of desert seed designs. She also cofounded NatureMaker, an active learning library at ASU where hands-on explorations of nature inspire sustainable innovation.

You can learn more about her work at adelheidfischer.com.