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While an undergraduate student in Anthropology and Latin American Studies at UBC, Leah Huff visited Guatemala and was struck by an immediate love for the country - a sense of belonging that she could not quite articulate. Determining that graduate work might allow her to return to Guatemala, she undertook a Master's, and later a PhD, in Cultural Geography at Queen's University, and through her work in geography came to understand her connection to Guatemala from the perspective of phenomenology and the power of experience through sense of place. Leah's ethnographic fieldwork is inspired by the writings of Keith Basso (Wisdom Sits in Places), who artfully demonstrates that it is when we sense place, in place, and learn the stories of that place, that cross-cultural communication can happen. Leah's dissertation combines her training in Anthropology and Geography to produce an ethnogeography of San Pedro La Laguna, a Tz'utujil Maya community in the Highlands of Guatemala. Leah has focused on how storytelling traditions and sacred healing practices can help to shed light on a local sense of place. In this work she is motivated by the simple yet profound words of writer and broadcaster Thomas King: "The truth about stories is that that's all we are." Leah discovered a passion for teaching and learning while studying at Queen's, and made the decision to keep this as a focus during all of her academic pursuits. She comes to Quest after a three-year contract teaching cultural, gender, and Latin American geographies at Mount Allison University, where she was honoured with two teaching awards: The JEA Crake Teaching Award for the Social Sciences (2010) and the Students' Administrative Council's Excellence in Teaching Award (2011). Leah describes Quest as her "dream job" and is excited to develop and teach a range of courses relating to her broad interests in the social sciences and Latin American studies. Leah is an avid knitter and crocheter, and will take advantage of any opportunity to stitch away on one of her many works-in-progress. She loves to cook, garden, and spend time with her husband, Sefton, and their three perfect cats. After many years of living in the flat lands of Ontario and New Brunswick, Leah plans to make the most of living in Squamish by dusting off her mountain bike and making sure her hiking boots still fit. |
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