Headshot of Stephanie Ashenfelder.

Stephanie Ashenfelder

Director, Digital Media Studies

Academic Director, Studio Arts

MFA, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA

Office Location
206 Morey Hall
Web Address
Website

Office Hours: I have an open-door office policy and encourage you to reach out to me to set up a time to meet individually as your schedule allows. You can reach out using the email provided above.

Research Overview

Stephanie’s digital and artistic scholarship is rooted in socially conscious, interdisciplinary projects. Through collaborations with community partners, her work amplifies diverse voices, raises awareness, fosters understanding, and promotes education.

Stephanie Ashenfelder serves as the co-director of EchoLab, where she leads the integration of arts-based methods into the lab’s community-engaged research. Drawing on her background in digital media and socially engaged art, she helps shape EchoLab’s participatory approach—one that centers storytelling, visual art, and performance as tools for public engagement and collective reflection.

Research Interests

  • Environmental media and eco-arts
  • Community-based and participatory design
  • Critical digital pedagogy
  • Archives and memory
  • Socially engaged art

Courses Offered (subject to change)

  •  Design Fundamentals
  •  Senior Capstone, Digital Media Studies
  •  Climate Interventions: Performing Arts + New Media

Selected Awards

  • Institute of Human Health and the Environment Pilot Project Funding. $50,000. 2024-2025.
  • Humanities Project, University of Rochester. $10,000. 2024.
  • Verizon and NYC Media Lab Grant Educational Innovation Grant. $100,000. 2022.

Selected Keynotes and Featured Talks

  • “Art and Climate Change”, Environmental Connections, WXXI, 2025.
  • “Climate Change Has a Communications Problem” 2024, TEDx Tupper Lake Wild Center Museum, Tupper Lake, NY.
  • “Integrating Storytelling, Art, and Community for Climate Action” 2024, Citizens Climate Lobby Northeast Regional Conference: Forward Together, Schenectady, NY.
  • “Storytelling and Art as a Catalyst for Climate Discussion” 2024.
  • International Conference on Environment and Life Science, Mexico City.
  • “Climate Interventions: Art and New Media” 2023, a2ru National Conference, Pennsylvania State University.
  • “ADK Climate Stories: Climate Change and the Arts” 2023.
  • Adirondack Research Consortium, Lake Placid Conference Center.

Selected Projects

Two crew boats with one person each on a river seen from above.

Watershed Movements

Co-principal Investigator. Watershed Movements is designed to measure the correlation between perceptions of human well-being and river health, grounded in the belief that engaging people through art and storytelling fosters emotional connection, deepens environmental awareness, and has the potential to shift how individuals perceive their relationship to place and ecological well-being.

A booth on a street with a person standing beside it.

ADK Climate Project

Co-principal Investigator and digital lead. Exploring the human experience of climate change through storytelling and art using a mobile audio recording studio that traverses the Adirondack Park, inviting its inhabitants to share their personal narratives reflected in the changing climate of their surroundings.

Selected Community Educational Partnerships

Resistance Mapping

Partner: Your Local History, Rochester, NY

  • Collaboration to expand the existing digital platform on place-based racism and resistance in Rochester to a statewide initiative

The Wild Center Volunteer Program

Partner: The Wild Center, Tupper Lake

  • Supported students in creating engaging media content to promote volunteer opportunities and enhance museum outreach.
  • Increased volunteer base from 40 to 120 in six months

Rochester Holocaust Survivor Registry

Partner: Friends of Mt. Hope, Rochester, NY