Natalie Baloy
Dr. Natalie JK Baloy is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Salish Sea Institute. Natalie brings over a decade of experience championing interdisciplinary collaboration, community-engaged research, and place-based teaching and learning. She lived on Orcas Island while completing her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the University of British Columbia and now lives with her family in Bellingham. She co-founded the Salish Sea Studies program, collaborating with students, faculty, and community partners to create a curriculum that combines the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, and Indigenous ways of knowing to cultivate a sense of place and responsibility to the future of the Salish Sea.
As the Associate Director of the Salish Sea Institute (2017-2022), Natalie worked with Dr. Kathryn Sobocinski and former SSI Director Ginny Broadhurst as project manager and editor of the State of the Salish Sea report, participated in the program committee for the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference, and coordinated events for bioregional and transboundary relationship-building. She has served on the board of the Friends of the San Juans and is a member of the Puget Sound Partnership’s Social Science Advisory Council.
Natalie’s work is informed by scholarship in critical Indigenous studies, settler colonial studies, and interdisciplinary collaborations toward transformation in context and community. She is co-PI with Dr. Marco Hatch and Social Science lead with Active Societal Participation in Research and Education, a National Science Foundation-funded initiative to promote community-engaged research as valued and viable in the geosciences. Her book, Ethical Complexities in Research for Justice: A Companion for Engaged Scholars, co-authored with Ronald David Glass and Sheeva Sabati, will be published by SAGE in Fall 2026. She is collaborating with Raven Borsey at Setting Sun Circle, anthropologist Michael Shepard, and the Suttles estate to bring to publication an unpublished manuscript by the late anthropologist Wayne Suttles, entitled Reef Netters of the Salish Sea, with updated research that engages Indigenous methodologies and lifts up Indigenous futurity.
Natalie wrote an Emerging Issues report with Isabella Pipp entitled “Mega-Projects, Cumulative Impacts, & Indigenous Nationhood.” Her work has also been published in Settler Colonial Studies, American Indian Quarterly, and Elementa: Science for the Anthropocene. She has co-authored chapters in recent collections with James Miller (Decolonising the Built Environment), Nini V. Hayes (Engaging Critical Pedagogy in Education), and Sheeva Sabati (The Routledge Handbook of Field Research).
As Director of the Salish Sea Institute, Natalie prioritizes bioregional community-building and science and scholarship that bridges borders, cultures, and disciplines for a thriving Salish Sea. As a settler scholar and resident on sovereign lands and waters of the Salish Sea, she is committed to developing and enacting good relations between peoples, lands, and waters.