A settler scholar originally from Los Angeles, CA (Achooykomenga in Tovaangar), Ava Guihama Olson holds a B.A. in American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (xučyun). Their undergraduate work focused on organized crime, sex work, pornography, sexual war crimes, and the image of the Asian woman in American culture. As a doctoral student in the ESSP program, their academic work considers place and precarity in the American West, examining how wilderness and wasteland landscapes are constructed through and by settler colonialism and how white supremacy and environmental policy mutually uphold each other in an American context. They are additionally interested in how settler masculinities are ensconced in cultures of plasticity/durability and extinction. 

2024 Krohn Fellow for Environmental Humanities
2023 Departmental Citation Winner, UC Berkeley
2022 Adam Z. Rice Fellow for American Studies
2017 California Governor's Medallion for Creative Writing