About

Click here to view my CV.

img_2594-e1527185547778.jpgI am an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Middlebury College. My background is in human geography, cultural anthropology, and environmental science. In my research and teaching, I explore questions of power, knowledge, environmental justice, and social change by combining scholarship from political ecology, global environmental politics, science and technology studies, institutional theory, social movements, and critical pedagogy.

I apply an ethnographic approach to the study of environmental politics, focusing on the everyday practices and lived experiences of the people who together constitute global environmental governance. My dissertation explored the influence of “ecosystem services” concepts in biodiversity conservation. This work began in British Columbia but quickly expanded to reach across broader transnational policy networks, bringing me from Japan and Brazil to Turkey, Germany, and Burma — a range of other locales in between — and finally back to Canada and California. I have two ongoing research projects investigating (a) clashing “theories of change” in the environmental movement and (b) how educators are grappling with the radical implications of contemporary ecological crises through their teaching. My research has been supported by a number of awards including grants from SSHRC, the National Science Foundation, UC Berkeley, and Middlebury College. I have written for the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Environment & Planning E: Nature & Space, Human Geography, Conservation and Society, Global Environmental Change, Journal of Peasant Studies, and Research in Economic Anthropology.

ResearchGate / Academia / Google Scholar

I completed my PhD at UC Berkeley in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management (ESPM) before starting my post at Middlebury in 2018. I am from Vancouver and attended UBC as an undergraduate, where I studied Anthropology and Environmental Science before completing an MA in Geography at the University of Toronto. Prior to grad school, I spent some time living in the central Philippines, where I led marine research and monitoring initiatives for an organization supporting community-based marine protected areas. I moved to Vermont from Oakland which was my home for six years. When I wasn’t hunched over my computer, you could often find me up in the Berkeley hills making the most of California before they made me graduate. I look more forward to running, cycling, hiking, camping, and many other -ings related to being outdoors while waiting for Vermont to thaw each year.

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