Efficient retro webpage for Kathryn Schaffer
ex-astrophysicist¹, ex-art-school-professor²

In 2026, with AI exploding and data centers gobbling up unfathomable amounts of energy, I am opting to keep a low profile on the internet. Here is what I am currently doing with my time:

1. hands-on bumblebee and salamander habitat development in NW Illinois.³
2. thinking about interdisciplinary applications of quantum physics (and sometimes philosophy of math).⁴
3. a little bit of online teaching at a rural community college.
4. self-publishing a book on the physics of light aimed at an art audience.
5. being a crazy cat-lady who lives in a cabin in the woods and grows/forages her food.



My contact information is hidden in this page if you can figure out how to find it. I am enjoying spending more time in the woods than reading emails, but I welcome inquiries from former colleagues and students, or potential future collaborators.

Notes:
¹ex-astrophysicist because of gender issues that persist in science. See this 2021 interview.
²ex-professor because of a structural bias in academic contracts that was activated in my case by the pandemic. I experienced an abrupt, forced shift into unpaid domestic labor that was, because of the economics of the situation, difficult to reverse. My tenured status as a professor did not entail flexible options or support for a rebound. A scheduling error in 2023, because it had economic impacts related to childcare and health care coverage, cornered me into resignation. It was not my free choice to leave.
³the bee habitat project was an intentional divestment of two mid-career retirement funds from standard market portfolios, redirected into direct biodiversity action. In 2020, we lucked into discovering a degraded agricultural property for sale that was adjacent to known populations of a number of endangered species, including an endangered bee we had already worked to support in Chicago. With friends and family we began building prairie/savanna on ~9 acres of former tillage, and restoring woodlands on about 8 acres. Our site plan was developed in consultation with regional ecology and land management experts, and we are working in conjunction with federal conservation programs. Since 2023, we have hosted a documented population of the federally endangered bee, providing forage as well as nest habitat. More on the bee: Rusty Patched Bumble Bee
⁴if my quantum-related work interests you, start with obliterating thingness. A more technical followup addressing the interdisciplinary application of Bell test reasoning is here: "yes ghosts, no unicorns: quantum modeling and causality in physics and beyond." Both papers were co-written with Gabriela Barreto Lemos. Some of my talks on quantum physics and music/art/metaphor are on youtube, as are some intro quantum lectures I prepared for students a few years back. Just search my name.