Samantha “Sami” Stroud

Samantha "Sami" Stroud was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and has lived there for most of her life. She found her love for plants of the Southwest by exploring the Sandia Mountains with her father and through her mother's family lineage of curanderismo (Mexican folk healing).

Stroud attended college as an Honors student at Arizona State University (ASU), double majoring in Japanese and Chinese Language and Literature. While at ASU, she spent a summer abroad in Hiroshima, Japan, studying the Japanese language and culture at Hiroshima Shudo University. After two years at ASU, Stroud returned to her hometown of Albuquerque to study at the University of New Mexico (UNM). She spent an additional semester abroad studying Chinese at Xibei University in Xi'an, China. She obtained a dual degree in Geography and East Asian Studies (Chinese concentration), with minors in Interdisciplinary Honors and Japanese

As an undergraduate, she participated in an Honors Research Institute, conducting archival research on Hispanic Historic Sites in New Mexico. She has also worked at the Southwest Environmental Finance Center, where she authored a white paper comparing tap and bottled water resources in the state of New Mexico and is currently collaborating on a comprehensive guide to the Clean Water and Drinking Water Act State Revolving Funds.

Stroud is a second-year Masters student in the department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the UNM. Her research focuses on shifting epistemologies and pedagogies of herbal medicine in New Mexico. She also has broad interests in human-plant relationships and more-than-human geographies.