About

Nat Mengist (his/hers) is a Washington-born child of Ethiopian Amhara immigrants. He is currently a PhD student in Learning Sciences at the University of Washington.

Nat has professional experience in community gardening, outdoor science education, and nonprofit leadership. This has included (A) co-founding the first racial equity team at Seattle Tilth, (B) co-designing the research infrastructure for the NSF-funded Learning in Places project, and (C) co-directing The Common Acre into an era of BIPOC governance. Since 2018 Nat has been facilitating workshops and trainings on race in organizations. He began executive coaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and is passionate about developing long-term partnerships with executive directors, especially black women leaders. He is currently the Development Coordinator of Nurturing Roots.

For the last 10 years Nat has explored the political history of alchemy — an early scientific practice that drew upon technical knowledge from across North Africa, Asia, and Europe. His collaborative artwork DIY Homunculi — which has been featured on the animated video podcast Life Touching Life — appropriates alchemy to expand how we imagine both environmental and reproductive justice. He is currently studying the affinities between early modern European alchemy and contemporary claymaking in Mexican and Sudanese contexts.

Nat is a Member-at-Large on the executive board of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. His research has been supported by the office of Graduate Student Equity & Excellence, the College of Engineering Dean's Fellowship, and the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, and he has publications in (1) Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, (2) Art, Design, & Communication in Higher Education, (3) the Companion Publication of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, and (4) the artist-published anthology, The Anthropocene Laboratory.