Amandah van Merlin, MA

Experience

Amandah (she/her) brings over five years of experience in proponent-led Environmental Assessment through the Alberta Consultation Office and Impact Assessment Agency of Canada to the position of Research Analyst (Environmental Assessment Team) at Firelight Group.

As a settler of mixed European heritage, Amandah’s thinking is informed by her ties to both Alberta and Ontario. She completed her undergraduate at the University of Alberta and received her MA from Trent University where her research focused on a holistic view of the peasant economy during the Late Roman Period in the Goksu Valley in Turkiya. Amandah brought her historical understanding of how people exerted agency within a system they had limited control over to the current Canadian colonial context, committing herself to centering Indigenous approaches and perspectives while developing models to assess the economic impacts on Indigenous communities for the Specific Claims Tribunal.

Amandah has also worked at the Royal Alberta Museum in the creation of exhibits for the Natural History and Human History galleries and currently spends her free time serving as the President of the Archaeological Society of Alberta - Edmonton Center Board. There, she has helped develop educational opportunities for the public to engage with archaeology through surveys, workshops, and lecture series. Amandah also enjoys knitting, gardening, hiking, alpine skiing, and doing historic research on her home and neighbourhood.