Ashley E. Smith is a critical care registered nurse and graduate student in Museum studies at Harvard University whose research explores the histories and epistemologies of American waterscapes, with particular interest in the history of science, medicine, and natural history.

Her current graduate research examines nineteenth and early twentieth-century lighthouse stations as sites of medical care, scientific observation, and environmental monitoring. Using historical records and material culture, Smith investigates how lighthouse keepers and their families observed, documented, and responded to health and environmental conditions at the water’s edge. Her work considers these historical practices alongside the work of modern waterkeepers, exploring continuities in how people observe, record, protect, and produce knowledge about changing waterscapes.

Smith brings more than a decade of nursing experience to this work, alongside graduate training in museum studies, volunteer experience and board service in watershed conservation, and ongoing naturalist training. Her broader interests include freshwater science, natural history museum collections, and the historical relationship between human and ecological health.

Through Gryffin River Shack, under the umbrella of Gryffin Studio, Smith shares her developing research and explores waterscapes as living archives of science, medicine, natural history, and human experience.