Rachel N. Stern (she/her) is a geographer and researcher, focused on extreme heat, housing justice, and aging. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Geography at UBC, co-supervised by Mohammed Rafi Arefin (Geography) and Leila Harris (IRES).
Her research focuses on seniors’ experience of extreme heat in rental and co-operative housing in Vancouver, specifically using interviews, focus groups, and written methodologies to better understand the politics of indoor heat. Her work is community-engaged and she works closely with a number of organizations, including the South Vancouver Seniors Network. More broadly, Rachel is interested in the role of memory politics, storytelling, oral histories, and arts-based methodologies in understanding experiences of extreme heat and climate change. Her work is supported by the UBC Public Scholars Initiative.
She was born and raised in New York City, the ancestral homeland of the Lenape, and has always been interested by urban land and relationship to place. She is a recent settler on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil- Waututh) Nations. Rachel holds a B.A. from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. She previously worked with the Environmental Law Institute’s Environmental Peacebuilding program and the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience’s Global Initiative for Justice, Truth and Reconciliation.
Featured Publications:
Stern, R.N., & Yoon, L. (2025). Staying Cool: Experiences and Challenges Using Cooling Centres in Metro Vancouver. University of British Columbia (UBC) Centre for Climate Justice
Stern, R. N., & Arefin, M. R. (2024). Extreme Heat in the Home: Understanding the 2021 Pacific Northwest Heat Wave through the British Columbia Coroners Report. Journal of Disaster Studies, 1(1), 103–118
Contact: rnstern@student.ubc.ca