Anya Gleizer
Environmental Researcher - River Guardian - Artist
Founder of the Art, Biodiversity and Climate (ABC) Network, University of Oxford, and Co-founder of the Museum of Climate Hope in Oxford Gardens, Libraries and Museums.
Anya's story
Anya Gleizer is an environmental justice activist, artist and researcher. She finds herself and her direction through fresh water - and always has.
Anya studied conservation and ecology in Dartmouth College, US and worked in freshwater conservation in Siberia and Alaska, from Lake Baikal to the Yukon River. Pivoting in 2013 into activism and art-based communication and teaching, she did her Masters in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art and is now pursuing a PhD on indigenous practices of protest, conservation and reconciliation in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. She began working on the Tamesis Robe, a community artwork dedicated to the Thames, environmental grief and slow violence, in 2024. She is devoted to her local rivers, the Thames and the Cherwell, which first lured her to the UK, and have kept her rooted. She is an avid rower, kayaker and swimmer, holding the record of the youngest female to solo kayak lake Baikal.
Anya's research concerns citizen science and indigenous sovereignty, reconciliation and performance methods in environmental activism. She believes that there will never be an effective environmental conservation effort without justice-work and community care.
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In 2018 she founded The Flute & the Bowl Environmental Art network, and the ABC Network in the University of Oxford followed in 2020. FLUTE & BOWL NETWORK
Her art has been featured has been featured in the National Galleries of Scotland, the Moscow Biennale, the Bodleian Libraries, the Glasgow International, and the Pitt Rivers Museum
In 2023 she co-found the Museum of Climate Hope across Oxford's Gardens Libraries and Museums
​She became a River Guardian of the Thames in 2025.
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