Alumni
Ricardo Pelai (MSc 2019)
Thesis title: Whose expertise counts? Assisted migration and the politics of knowledge
Ricardo Pelai grew up in the Bolivian Amazon, which motivated him to study conservation of natural resources at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Ricardo is broadly interested in applying insights from the social sciences to understand environmental problems in light of climate change. More specifically, Ricardo is interested in how knowledge is governed in the science-policy interface within the forest sector. Ricardo was part of the SES Research Group for over five years in various roles. He worked as an Undergraduate Research Assistant (as part of co-op and work-learn terms), Graduate Research Assistant, and most recently, as a MSc student. In 2019, he completed a MSc in Forestry at UBC under the supervision of Dr. Hagerman and Dr. Kozak.
Ricardo is a Policy Researcher with the Council of Canadian Academies.
Dr. Yemi Adeyeye (PhD 2020)
Thesis title: Power, people, places and spaces: examining the politics of participation across scales of resource governance
For a decade, Yemi’s experience has cut across roles with INGOs, management of multi-stakeholder initiatives including youth programs and interdisciplinary research activities focusing on the intersections of power, people and spaces in landscapes (forests, water and agro-systems) governance. Yemi’s portfolio covers experiences in Africa, Europe, America, Asia and the Pacific. Yemi holds a PhD in multi-scalar and participatory aspects of resource governance, from the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Yemi is the Director of the Young Professionals for Agricultural Development (YPARD).
Dr. Kieran Findlater (Post-doctoral fellow 2017-2019)
Kieran Findlater studies the interplay of human judgment and decision-making, global environmental change and natural resources management. As a post-doctoral fellow and member of the Social-Ecological Systems Research Group, he studied stakeholder perceptions of risk and uncertainty associated with the climate-adaptive practice of assisted migration in BC’s forestry sector. He completed his PhD at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia.
Dr. Findlater is a Senior Policy Advisor in the Impacts and Innovation Unit at the Privy Council Office at the Government of Canada.
Sara Nawaz (PhD 2021)
Thesis title: Beyond Naturalness? Social dimensions of gene editing in agriculture
Sara graduated with her PhD in 2021 from the IRES program. Wit the SES research group, Sara worked as a Research Assistant on two SSHRC-funded projects. As part of the Novel Management Interventions in the Anthropocene project Sara helped develop a “decision pathways survey” to explore the levels, logic and potential malleability of support/opposition for novel management interventions for conservation – such as assisted migration. As part of the SSHRC Target-Based Governance project, Sara examined how new molecular interventions and digital ways of knowing are reshaping debates about access and benefit sharing around genetic resources.
Sara is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford.
Alice Henry (MSc 2017, Co-supervised with Dr. Rob Kozak)
Thesis title: 2 legit 2 quit: The effect of institutions on the perceptions of legitimacy in the Great Bear Rainforest
Alice grew up in Chicago, IL, and so it wasn’t until she went camping in the forests of Wisconsin at 12 years old that she started finding her passion for the environment outside of charismatic animals. While she studied for her BA at Hamilton College in Upstate NY, Alice learned the greatness of the outdoors through hiking and marathon canoe racing in the Adirondacks. During a trip to East Kalimantan, Indonesia, she began her journey to protect forests as places important for both biological and cultural diversity.
Alice is a Program Coordinator with The Share Reuse Repair Initiative.
Veronika Gukova
Kasmira Cockerill (MSc, 2018)
Thesis title: The politics of collaborative governance: community-based conservation in northern Kenya
Kasmira grew up in southern Ontario to a nomadic and travel focused family. It was no surprise that during her undergraduate degree at UBC she spent time studying in both South America and Africa. Her eventual calling was to Kenya after spending time there as part of the Canadian Field School in Africa program. Following her graduation from the UBC Faculty of Science in 2012 Kasmira moved to Kenya to work in applied conservation and research. She currently resides in the northern rangelands off the slopes of Mount Kenya.
Kasmira is a Senior Manager, Kenya Portfolio with Maliasili.
Mia Goodman (BSc)
Mia is interested in how value systems guide the question asked in scientific inquiry and the translation of the results of this research into policy and governance. She is concerned with the tension between the necessity for timely conservation action and the slow dispersal of knowledge from the scientific community into broader society. Mia is a third year undergraduate at UBC studying forest science. She is very excited to be working in the SES research group for the summer. Mia grew up in the Pacific Northwest and thus has a deep understanding of rain and a great appreciation for mountains. Her main passions are looking at trees, eating, and swimming in rivers.
Dr. Wim Carton
My overarching academic interest is in society-nature relations, and how these are changed and articulated through various sustainability challenges, particularly around climate change mitigation policies, forestry and agriculture. My PhD thesis in Human Geography, with which I graduated in 2016, examined three market-based mechanisms for climate and energy policy and what kind of environmental outcomes they generate. The two projects that I am currently involved in for my postdoc to some extent build on this. The first project, which is my main focus here at UBC, studies two carbon offsetting projects in the global South. Briefly put, I examine the ideas and understanding of what ‘carbon’ is to the different actors involved in the offsetting market. From there I try to understand the potential tensions, conflicts and contradictions that arise from differing meanings of what ‘carbon is, and what it is ‘for’, and ultimately what implications this has for the projects’ combined goals of carbon sequestration and sustainable development. The second project I am involved in is part of a larger research project with colleagues in Sweden, the US and Uganda. Together with smallholder farmers in Uganda, we are experimenting with various perennial farming systems as a way to decrease vulnerability to extreme weather events and other environmental stressors, and to understand to compatibility of perennial crops with existing farming practices.
Dr. Agata Pietrzyk-Kaszyńska
Agata Pietrzyk-Kaszyńska holds a Ph.D. in ecology from the Institute of Environmental Sciences, Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland), where she currently works as a research associate. Her scientific interests focus on human dimension of environmental protection, particularly on biodiversity governance, institutions involved in nature conservation, and societal factors influencing policy performance at various administrative levels. Currently, she is involved in exploring different mapping techniques to collect data on stakeholders’ perception of ecosystem services supply from case study areas in Poland. In May 2015, she was a visiting scholar at Social-Ecological Systems Research Group and since then cooperates closely with the Group, working on comparative research concerning experts perception of different conservation interventions.