Visiting Scholar

Research interests: Human dimensions research in climate change adaptation; the dynamics of meaning-making in the Anthropocene; transformative change processes; transdisciplinary and integrative frameworks.

Gail has substantial experience working in sustainable development in Latin America and Africa, experimenting with pathways to transformative change. This work was largely carried out with non-profit organizations with partners in the global South, but also included several small research projects funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre. Over this time, she also gained academic teaching experience on sustainability topics at the graduate and undergraduate levels at John F. Kennedy University, Royal Roads University and at the University of Oslo. This experience contextualizes her current inquiry into the human dimensions of global environmental change processes, specifically climate change.

At present, Gail is a doctoral fellow at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo, Norway, in the AdaptationCONNECTS research project (Combining Old and New kNoweldge to Enable Conscious Transformation). Her PhD research is on how adaptation could be more commensurate with the complexity of climate change, and construed as transformation to sustainability. Her field work involves coffee-producing communities of Guatemala through to buyers and retailers in North America. She joined the Social-Ecological Systems Research Group as a visiting scholar in 2019, and is currently based at UBC.