Abby Cunniff studies pressing environmental justice and climate justice issues in prisons and the myriad issues that arise for incarcerated people. 

Abby's dissertation project is a labor history of California’s prison fire camp program from 1970-2020. It asks under what conditions incarcerated workers became the "infantry" of wildfire response in the state and how racial capitalism shaped this program into a climate change response workforce in the late twentieth century. This contemporary history opens up critical inquisitions about labor and power within climate planning and environmental change.

They are a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Environmental Studies department. They received their B.A. from Wesleyan University in 2017 and were a UCSC Global and Community Health Fellow in 2021.