Story by Mars Reilly

Marlene Brito-Millán, PhD, joined SES this year as an assistant professor of ecology, and her extensive research background and solidarity work make her an exciting addition to Loyola’s faculty. After years of working with marine and montane socioenvironmental systems, Brito-Millán returned to her Chicago hometown to make connections with the Loyola community and beyond.

In addition to her upbringing in urban Chicago, Brito-Millán spent her early years visiting the birthplaces of her parents in rural southern Mexico, where she “encountered peopled green spaces that she would later carry with her into biology.” While studying the natural sciences in college, she attended research field trips to Belize and Hawaii, where she “met the ocean for the first time and felt drawn to the marine world.” The experience reaffirmed her interest in the environment and helped her choose the field of marine biology as her main focus of study, specifically coral reef systems.

Although her PhD is in oceanography and marine ecology, Brito-Millán’s studies have included the spatial and temporal dynamics of complex peopled environmental systems, both terrestrial and aquatic. Additionally, she works on “computational modeling of socioenvironmental systems,” allowing her work to apply to inland cities such as Chicago.

Professor Brito-Millán explained that she was attracted to Loyola and the School of Environmental Sustainability due to how students are encouraged to learn. “The social justice emphasis on caring for others and the world aligns with my values,” she said. Additionally, the interdisciplinary approaches and connections between faculty members from varying fields inspire her. “It feels like there is a drive to have more critical and complex conversations with multiple voices,” she explained. “I’m still meeting impressive, amazing folks doing antiracist and anticolonial work that points to where we as a society need to go in dealing with inequities, disparities, and the climate crisis.” 

One of the most profound influences on Brito-Millán’s work is her campesin@ heritage as the child of mestizo Mexicans with Indigenous Nahua, Portuguese, and Spanish ancestors. As a result, she is committed to aiming her work toward “revealing and dismantling the structures in which science is embedded,” those that have historically used science as an arm of empire, especially against communities of color and Indigenous peoples. One of her goals as a professor and researcher is “to bring light to this history and center truths that are often left out of the conversation” to inspire science questions that meet community needs. I’m very intentional about bringing voices that are not usually in the academy into the classroom to amplify those who are otherwise ignored.”

Professor Brito-Millán pointed to the Zapatista movement, in particular, an Indigenous-led social activism movement based in Chiapas, Mexico, for their inspiring work in shifting how we think about living and relating to one another as individuals and communities. Their work is centered around protecting dignified and autonomous lifeways for Indigenous communities and organizing to defend their territories against massive corporate-state joint projects—whether mining, tourism, energy, agroindustry, or infrastructure ventures—that damage and displace local ecosystems and communities. The Zapatistas are at the forefront of adapting traditional and new ways to exist sustainably while relating to one another outside the dominant capitalist system that exploits people of color, lands, and waters. Their work has captured the imagination of grassroots communities organizing for liberation and autonomy worldwide. 

Brito-Millán brings this type of thinking to her current research projects based mainly in southern Mexico. Currently, she maintains ties to her home in Mexico. She is working with Nahua communities in the mountain region of Guerrero to understand how water systems function within a larger socioenvironmental system. “Part of my work is trying to bring both ways of knowing and relating to water into the conversation,” she explained. Recognizing that the communities she partners with are also active caretakers and defenders of their territories, she is committed to empowering community representatives themselves with accessible scientific methods that can inform local governance. “I focus on using collaborative scientific methods of monitoring water quality in a way that will serve these communities rather than replacing existing Indigenous practices.”

In the future, Brito-Millán is interested in fostering exchange between the communities in Mexico with whom she works and the Loyola students she teaches here; “one of my dreams is to function as a bridge between these two worlds,” she said. Additionally, as she settles back into Chicago, she looks forward to partnering with collaborators interested in decolonial feminist methodologies, solidarity science, and building relationships with communities with a vision toward food sovereignty and “practicing ways of relating to each other that move beyond the transactional.”

SES and the Loyola community are incredibly lucky to have such an inspiring new faculty member, and we look forward to the great things sure to come from Professor Marlene Brito-Millán.