Ashley E. Smith is completing a master’s degree in Museum Studies at Harvard University and is considering doctoral study in the History of Science, with a focus on natural history and the American South. She is a registered nurse with a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida and is concurrently completing a Master Naturalist certification through Auburn University.

Her focus examines how southern rivers and their biodiversity have been translated into scientific knowledge through fieldwork, specimen collection, and museum infrastructures, and how these historical systems continue to shape contemporary ecological science and conservation practices. She is especially interested in the American South as a site where ecological observation and institutional natural history developed enduring frameworks for understanding biodiversity.

By tracing the historical production of ecological knowledge and its present-day continuities, this research seeks to illuminate how ecological data, collections, and environmental narratives are constructed, stabilized, and circulated over time. In doing so, it contributes to scholarship in the history of science and environmental history, while also offering historically grounded perspectives for interpreting and communicating biodiversity knowledge in contemporary scientific and conservation contexts.

Smith’s work will move between museum collections and freshwater systems, shaped by a sustained attention to natural history, archival materials, and field observation, especially through the lens of Riverkeeper fieldwork.