WATER GOVERNANCE - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Co - Director

Karen Bakker (Ph.D. Oxford, B.A.&Sc. McMaster University) is a Professor in the Department of Geography, a Canada Research Chair, and the Director of the Program on Water Governance at the University of British Columbia. She is a Member of the Royal Society of Canada's New College of Scholars, Artists and Scientists. Committed to interdisciplinarity, Dr Bakker collaborates with natural, social and medical scientists across a range of disciplines. Her current research focuses on water governance, the political economy of environmental change, and environmental politics. She has authored over 100 academic publications, including books with Oxford and Cornell University Press, and articles in leading journals such as Science and Global Environmental Change. Dr Bakker also regularly acts as an advisor to governments, NGOs, and international organizations. Dr Bakker is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Rhodes Scholarship and a Canada's Top 40 under 40 award. For more information see her website. Dr. Karen Bakker co-Director: Program on Water Governance Professor: Department of Geography Canada Research Chair in Political Ecology Dr. Leila Harris co-Director: Program on Water Governance Associate Professor: Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), and the Institute for Gender, Race and Sexuality and Social Justice (GRSSJ) at UBC DOUG ROBB Graduate student: UBC Geography Department Scott McKenzie Graduate Student: Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability EVELYN ARRIAGADA Graduate Student: Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability JOANNE NELSON PHD Student: Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability GAYLEAN DAVIES PHD Student: Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability

Job Titles:

• Research Associate and Policy Outreach Coordinator

Job Titles:

• Student

Joanne Nelson is a Ts'msyen woman who grew up in the northwestern BC communities of Port Edward and Prince Rupert where she gained a tremendous appreciation for nature, in particular the ocean environment. She is from Lax Kw'alaams on her mother's side and Kitsumkalum on her father's side. Her passions include traditional Ts'msyen art forms as well as paddle sports such as dragon boat and outrigger canoe. She is an incoming PhD student with IRES and is looking forward to conducting meaningful research with First Nations communities that favour Indigenous Ways of Knowing and traditional knowledge. Joanne has been an uninvited guest on the unceded land of the Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwu7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh people on and off for over 30 years.

Job Titles:

• Co - Director

Leila M. Harris (PhD and MA Geography, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, BA University of California-Berkeley) is an Associate Professor with the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES) and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice (GRSJ) at UBC. Her current research focuses on the intersection of environmental issues and inequality / social difference (especially gender and ethnicity), water governance (particularly issues associated with ongoing neoliberalization shifts), and water politics and conflict (particularly in the Middle East and Turkey). Related to water governance and politics, she is particularly interested in gender dimensions of recent water governance shifts (Gender, Place, and Culture, 2009), differential effects of water related changes for different populations (e.g. World Development, 2008) and across Northern and Southern contexts (review in Annals 2009), issues of scalar politics related to water resources (e.g. Political Geography, 2010), and narrative and discursive dimensions of water-related changes (e.g. Local Environment, 2009). Her new project also investigates privatization and commodification of water governance shifts comparatively, in Turkey, Ghana and South Africa, with particular attention to narrative, identity, citizenship, and sense of belonging in relation to varied geographies of water access and changing water governance practices.

Research interests: Water governance, water law, human right to water, science-policy interface. Biography: Scott is a PhD student in Resource Management and Environmental Studies working under the supervision of Dr. Leila Harris. Before UBC, Scott completed a Bachelors of Arts in Environmental Studies, Philosophy, and American Studies at the University of Kansas and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Iowa. Scott's research and writing focuses how contending notions of scale and regulation affect water policy (within the water-energy-food nexus). His work considers the relationship between the natural environment, human development, and law. He has also worked as a development agent for the United States Peace Corps in Morocco, in the Cairo office of the Near East Foundation, as a private practice lawyer in New Orleans, and at the International Water Resources Association in Montpellier France. At UBC Scott is a member of the EDGES research collaborative and the Program on Water Governance. Scott's research will be involved with Experience of Shifting Water Governance: Comparative Study of Water Access, Narrative and Citizenship in Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa. This collaborative comparative research project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and will focus on differing relationship between citizens in under served areas in Ghana and South Africa, their provision of water, and how they access and interact with the state to mediate this relationship.