A former journalist and speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans, Ned Randolph investigates intersections of power, social justice, and the environment, particularly in the Gulf South. He received his PhD in Communication from the University of California San Diego and is visiting assistant professor of Communication and English at Tulane, where he teaches environmental writing, media industries, political communication, and journalism. His research was named 2020 Dissertation of the Year by the American Studies Division of the National Communication Association (NCA). At A Studio in the Woods, he worked on his book project, Muddy Thinking in the Anthropocene, which proposes a framework of “Muddy Thinking” to recast and denaturalize the extractive effects of Modernity on Louisiana’s disappearing coast. Ned is a Monroe Fellow at the New Orleans Center for Gulf South at Tulane and received master’s degrees from the Graduate School of Journalism at University of California Berkeley and in creative writing from Eastern Michigan University. He is also a governing board member of the Cultural Studies Association.

“The environment and quiet were absolutely essential to getting my manuscript over the finish line. I’m still in disbelief! Being here in the woods and rising in the morning and going down in the evening with the crickets and critters, and walking along the Mississippi, kept me close to my subject. I was able to finish my manuscript that was once a dissertation that I began nine years ago. It is centered on this river and this land. Being here helped me ensure that this final vision contained the sensual rigor that it needed and deserved.” – Ned Randolph