Austin Michael Reese is a first-generation scholar and environmental-policy researcher at the University of Maine. His work examines how law, financial markets, media, and public institutions determine which environmental harms become visible, valuable, and politically actionable. Drawing on quantitative analysis, spatial methods, legal research, and environmental history, he studies how systems designed to manage land, water, and disaster risk distribute authority and protection across communities and borders.
His master’s thesis investigates whether public communications by global reinsurers shape cross-border news attention to major wildfires. The project connects catastrophe insurance, international communication, environmental governance, and the regulation of privately produced disaster knowledge. His other research examines authority in Yukon River salmon governance, the environmental and treaty consequences of the Kinzua Dam, water chemistry as a record of transboundary environmental change, and the geography of food access in postindustrial cities.
Austin’s broader interests include environmental and natural-resources law, disaster governance, freshwater policy, Indigenous sovereignty, and institutional accountability. He hopes to pursue legal and policy work addressing the systems that determine whose environmental losses are recognized, whose knowledge informs public decisions, and who receives protection when environmental governance fails. Outside his academic work, he enjoys hiking, exploring regional history, visiting antique shops, and performing music.