Michaila Peters

Michaila Peters is an Appalachian eco-feminist philosopher interested in healing rural-urban political polarization. She received her PhD in Philosophy from Boston College. For the past year, Peters has been a research fellow at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France. Previously, she graduated from the American University School of Public Affairs, where she actively worked with de-polarization non-profits, and studied philosophy as a Fulbright Killam Fellow at the University of Toronto. Peters is currently working on a book that investigates how rural climate injustice led to the rise of fascism in the United States. Thinking with bell hooks, she proposes that subaltern rural grief can interrupt rural-urban political polarization and imagine pathways towards climate justice. As a public philosopher committed to praxis, while at the center, Peters will collaborate with other subaltern Appalachian stakeholders to imagine ways to resist the most recent waves of greenwashing and energy colonization, like the AI Data Center Rush and corporate rare earth element mining.