EARTH SYSTEM GOVERNANCE - Key Persons
Afolayan Juwon Samuel is an environmental enthusiast, vastly experienced in water governance, mobilization of young water professionals, and sustainable technologies. He is currently a doctoral researcher at the Erasmus Darwin Sustainability Complex of Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom, where he researches into the development of next-generation functional biomaterials for diverse applications. He holds a bachelor's and master's degree from Kwara State University Nigeria, with First Class honours. His notable contributions to the water subject span journal publications, public speaking, and policy reforms in the water sector. His publications on water subjects spans water economics, governance, monitoring, and treatment. On the social front, he has recently served as panellist on the UN DEDA Global Policy Dialogue on Indigenous and Youth Solutions for Clean Water, 1/40 experts invited for the innovation Workshop on Water Quality Monitoring & Assessment by UNEP and WMO (Netherlands, 2023), UNICEF delegate and panellist at the Dushanbe Water Process (Tajikistan, 2022), guest speaker at the 3rd Philippines Sustainability Conference (2022) and the Asian Water Week (2022); a contributor to the water generation workshop hosted by the International Secretariat for Water (France, 2022), a panellist on the UNESCO-organized European-African Union Mega Pre Conference on Water, Megacities and Global Change, where he represented the African youths. He is the current coordinator of the chapters working group at the World Youth Parliament for Water (WYPW), and a winner of the prestigious Kofi Annan Foundation Changemaker Award, 2022.
Job Titles:
- Research Fellows
- Researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences
Coralie is a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences at KU Leuven (Belgium). She is affiliated to the Sustainable Futures research group, the Leuven International and European Studies institute, and the interdisciplinary research project CONNECTIVITY.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor in the Department of Politics
- Research Fellows
David Gordon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of California Santa Cruz, whose research focuses on the role of sub-national entities - and especially cities - in global climate governance, with a special interest in the politics of transformative urban sustainability.
Job Titles:
- Research Fellows
- Senior Social Scientist in the Sustainability Pathways Program at CSIRO
Dr Aysha Fleming is a senior social scientist in the Sustainability Pathways Program at CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation). Based in Hobart, Tasmania, Aysha's research centres around the application of educational theories to climate change in agriculture, fisheries and health, particularly theories of extension, decision making, and science and environmental communication. She is particularly interested in sustainability and how it might be better achieved. Her methods for this usually involve engaging communities with learning and change and qualitative research methodologies, including thematic coding and discourse analysis of interviews.
Job Titles:
- Fellow
- Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Department
- Research Fellows
Catherine Blanchard is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Department of International and European Law (Utrecht University, the Netherlands).
Catherine holds a civil law degree (LL.L, summa cum laude, 2012) and a bachelor degree in international development and globalization (B.Sc.Soc Hon DVM, summa cum laude, 2012) from the University of Ottawa, Canada, as well as a Juris Doctor from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada (JD, 2013). She also obtained a master degree in Public International Law from Utrecht University (LL.M., cum laude, 2015). Since 2014, Catherine is also a member of the Law Society of Ontario (Barrister and Solicitor, Ontario Bar Association, Canada). She further completed an internship at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in the fall of 2015.
Catherine's obtained her doctorate degree in Public International Law from Utrecht University (PhD, 2020), and her research, building on multidisciplinary insights, explored the possible impact of an integrated oceans governance approach on the fragmented regime of international fisheries, focusing on areas beyond national jurisdiction. Her doctoral research was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Research Talent Grant. She was also awarded a Doctoral Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
During her time as PhD Fellow, Catherine carried out part of her research as a guest researcher at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany. She also joined the Dutch delegation to the Preparatory Committee and Intergovernmental Conference for the development of an internationally legally binding instrument on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ process).
From January to July 2021, Catherine was a lecturer in Public International Law at Utrecht University School of Law, where she taugh different courses at the bachelor and master levels. She also supervsised master theses in the LLM programme Public International Law. From July 2021 to August 2022, Catherine was a post-doctoral researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) as part of the multidisciplinary project "Protecting deep seabed hydrothermal vent fields through area-based management tools", focusing on the legal regime for deep-sea mining activities and marine environmental protection.
Catherine is also co-convener of the Task Force on Earth System Law of the Earth System Governance Project, the largest social science research network in the area of governance and global environmental change.
Catherine's research interests include the law of the sea, international environmental law, deep-sea ecosystem management, the legal regimes for areas beyond national jurisdiction, international fisheries law, (environmental) governance studies and multidisciplinary approaches. She also has a particular interest in stakeholder engagement and policy research.
Job Titles:
- Research Fellows
- Senior Researcher at the German Development
Clara Brandi is Senior Researcher at the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE). As an economist and political scientist, she works on global governance questions, international trade and international normative theory, focusing on sustainable development and the linkages between trade and the environmental issues with a special interest on in the role of developing countries and rising powers. S
he has published numerous journal articles, book chapters and policy briefs on these and related topics. She earned completed her PhD from at the European University Institute, a Master's in Economics from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg where she was awarded the Hayek Award for her thesis and an MPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford where she was a Michael Wills Scholar.
Debdas Ray obtained his M.Sc. degree in Applied Geology from Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur, India) and subsequently his Ph.D. degree in Geology from the University of Calcutta, India.
He was a professor of Geology at Asutosh College (affiliated to University of Calcutta) for thirty-four years and of Environmental Geochemistry in the same college for twelve years. He was awarded Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship in Environmental Leadership Program in 2010-11 and carried out research at Montclair State University in USA. He has research experience in the fields of Petrology of Igneous and Metamorphic Rocks in Precambrian terrains, Environmental Management related to mining, Mineral Policy and Mineral Economics. Presently, he is actively engaged as a freelance researcher on environmental issues such as SDGs and their implementation.
He has some publications in these fields. He finds great interest and commitment in community outreach program and served many Ford Foundation funded projects in India. He believes in lifelong enrichment process and wants to contribute for the societal growth through concerted effort and collective wisdom.
Job Titles:
- Hungría Research
- Research Fellows
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Geography at Portland State University
- Research Fellows
Dr. Idowu Ajibade is an Assistant Professor of Geography at Portland State University. She is a faculty fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Solutions, PSU; an affiliate member at the McGill Sustainability Systems Initiative (MSSI), Canada; and a Young Scientist Fellow in Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) Programme, China. Idowu is an interdisciplinary scholar with a keen interest in human-environment relations and a focus on water-related extreme events, urbanization, adaptation and societal sustainability.
Research Interest
Her current research examines the social production of extreme events and multiple adaptations and resilient strategies to such events in cities of the global south. Specifically, she studies floods, storm surges, sea level rise and water scarcity induced by climatic, economic and urbanization processes. She explores how cities are adapting and transforming as a result of such events through new sustainability practices and through the construction of new eco-cities that are transforming the economic, political, and socio-cultural ‘riskscape' of cities. Idowu seeks to understand how such transformation is perceived by people undergoing change and how environmental injustices, eco-gentrification and uneven development are perpetuation through such transformation. Her work provides some direction on why the articulation of multiple and alternative trajectories of future socio-ecological and socio-economic relations are necessary in bringing about transformation towards a more inclusive sustainability in cities.
Idowu holds a PhD in Geography and Environmental Sustainability from Western University, Canada; an M.A degree in International Law and Human Rights from the University for Peace, Costa Rica; and an B.A in Philosophy from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. She was a Jeanne Sauve fellow at McGill University, Canada. Through her research, teaching and community engagement, she contributes to scholarship in areas of political ecology, hazards geography, urban planning, environmental justice, sustainability science and transformation studies.
Ajibade, I., & McBean, G. (2014) Climate extremes and housing rights: a political ecology of impacts, early warning and adaptation constraints in Lagos slum communities. Geoforum, 55: 76-86
McBean, G., & Ajibade, I. (2009) Climate change, related hazards and human settlements. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1(2): 179-186.
Job Titles:
- Research Fellow at the School of Geography
- Research Fellows
Jasper Montana is a Research Fellow at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. His work focuses on understanding the goals, values and norms that underpin governance arrangements for biodiversity at and across different levels of decision making, with a particular interest in how they shape the relationship between knowledge and action.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Foresight and Anticipatory
- Research Fellows
Joost Vervoort is Associate Professor of Foresight and Anticipatory Governance in the Environmental Governance Group at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development. He is also a Honorary Research Associate at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford and a Visiting Fellow at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto Japan. Joost is a Fellow of the Urban Futures Studio, a Fellow of the Utrecht Centre for Global Challenges, and a member of the Utrecht Young Academy, where he leads a project on the use of the future across UU.
An ecologist by training, Joost holds a PhD from Wageningen University in stakeholder engagement through scenarios and other approaches to sense-making in and navigating through complex systems.
Joost is currently leading an (amazing!) research team of 9 PhDs and 4 researchers who investigate how creative engagements with new futures through scenarios, visions, games and other means can lead to action in the present through different pathways, from policy guidance to shifts in culture.
Joost had published widely on foresight, anticipatory governance, transformations, and simulation gaming. In addition, he has led over 150 high-level foresight and anticipation processes to guide major policies and strategies in many global regions.
As a teacher, Joost leads the transdisciplinary course ‘Global Integration Project' as part of the BSc program Global Sustainability Science. In Global Integration Project, students work together directly with policy makers and national experts in 30+ countries around the world to develop transformation pathways. Joost also leads the course ‘The Sustainability Game', a unique collaboration between Utrecht University and Utrecht University of the Arts (HKU). In this course ,students work together to build digital games that engage players with sustainable futures.
Finally, Joost has been involved, since 2015, in the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes project - a global initiative to gather a database of radical niche or ‘seed' initiatives and use these seeds as a tool for the development of novel, inspiring Anthropocene futures.
Job Titles:
- Lecturer in the School of Business and Law
- Research Fellows
Dr Mostafa Naser is a Lecturer in the School of Business and Law at Edith Cowan University, Australia. He is a member of the Executive Council of the Asian Society of International Law (AsianSIL), Singapore; Research Fellow of the Earth System Governance Network, Sweden; Legal Expert of Legal Response Initiative (LRI), London and also admitted in the legal profession in Australia. Dr Naser has a PhD in Law from Macquarie University, Australia, a Bachelor of Law (Honours) from the University of London, a Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice from the College of Law, Australia.
Dr Naser was a Research Consultant of International Organization for Migration (IOM) in MECLEP project funded by EU.
Nibedita Mukherjee is interested in how decisions are shaped in conservation. Her current research focusses on: a) the linkages between scientific research and its impact on conservation decision making, (b) the precise nature of the decision making process itself and (c) the ways in which expert elicitation can be made more efficient.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor at the Institute for Environmental Studies
- Research Fellows
Oscar Widerberg is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) working on governance for sustainability. His research focuses on how cities, regions, companies and other non-state and sub-national actors influence global governance.
He has published academic articles, policy reports, opinion pieces and book chapters on a variety of earth system governance issues, primarily on climate change. For example, Oscar co-authored the UNEP Gap Report 2019 and published in Nature Climate Change. Before joining IVM, Oscar worked in international consulting, advising international public authorities, primarily European institutions, on energy, environment and climate policies.
Yiheyis Taddele Marua, Mark Stafford Smithb Ashley Sparrowa, Patricia F. Pinho, Opha Pauline Dube "A linked resilience and vulnerability framework for adaptation pathways in remote disadvantaged communities" Global Environmental Change 28 : 337-350, 2014 (DOI: 10.
Job Titles:
- Research Fellows
- Researcher at the University of Konstanz
Svenja Behrendt works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz, Germany (Faculty of Law) within the initiative of excellence "Constituting the Human Data Society: Autonomy - Agency - Accountability". She is a lawyer by training.
Recently, she has worked on the conceivability of a legal (and not onyl moral) obligation towards future generations and future people. It is based on the concept of human rights she has developped in her dissertation. Currently, she is working on a human-rights-based framework for adressing intergenerational justice and ressource allocation, the (in-)stability of democracy, and the question in what way law fosters or obstructs a societal change towards sustainability.
Her research interests lie within the field of human rights, democracy, constitutional law, legal theory, socio-legal studies and legal philosophy, as well as interdisciplinary connections of law (law and psychology, sociology, political, computational and information sciences).
Job Titles:
- Research Fellows
- Researcher at the Institute of Mountain Risk Engineering
Dr Thomas Thaler is currently working as a post-doc researcher at the Institute of Mountain Risk Engineering (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences). My research focuses on the topic of risk governance, social justices and natural hazard risk management in Europe, with a particular emphasis on questions relating to design and effectiveness of governance systems as well as integrated of European environmental policies into national and local institutions.
He holds a PhD from the Flood Hazard Research Centre at Middlesex University in London (UK). My thesis focuses on national flood risk management and related policies in different European countries. The goal of my PhD research project is to investigate how European countries with different institutional arrangements and governance systems and practices deal with the challenge of flood risk management. The project's objectives are working out the different institutional structures, decision-making practices and the flood response procedures in different European contexts and examining these from the perspective of risk-burden sharing.
From 2003 to 2009, he studied business administration at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. From 2004 to 2010, he studied international development at the University of Vienna, focussing on environmental, regional, public and development economics. His research focuses on national flood risk management and related policies strategies in different European countries.
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Research Fellows
Giovanni Antonelli is a Postdoc Researcher at the University of Milan and Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. Giovanni his Ph.D. in European administrative environmental law from Sapienza University of Rome. His research interests concern environmental law, climate change and energy regulation, European administrative law, European law and Institutions. He is an honorary fellow in Administrative and in Environmental Law at Sapienza University of Rome. In 2019 he was awarded the prestigious ‘Minerva' International Prize for Scientific Research issued by the Sapienza Foundation and Sapienza University of Rome. Giovanni is the founder of the International forum ‘U.S. - E.U.: Environmental Law Colloquium' and the co-founder of the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Climate Change" International Master Programme at La Statale University of Milan. Giovanni is the co-founder of "E.U. - U.S. Environmental Jurisprudence Observatory" for Diritto Processuale Amministrativo Law Journal. He is an associate member of the Center for American Studies of Rome, of the Sapienza Foundation, of the Environmental Law Forum, of the World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL) and of the Global Network for the study of Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE).
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant, at the Center for Law and Development
- Research Fellows
Imad Antoine Ibrahim is a Research Assistant, at the Center for Law and Development (CLD), College of Law, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar. He is also a Research Associate at gLAWcal - Global Law Initiative for Sustainable Development, Essex, United Kingdom and a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Center for Innovation in Gas Research and Utilization (CIGRU) & Institute of Water Security and Science (IWSS), West Virginia University, United States. He has been working on global environmental issues from a legal perspective and their interplay with other fields such as emerging technologies for the last five to six years where he spent three of them working on European commission projects in China on topics related to Climate change, energy, and environmental protection. He is currently involved in several projects related to natural resources management from a legal perspective and their interconnection with emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Big Data in places such as South Africa, MENA region, Central Asia, and China. Previously, he was a visiting researcher at the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), Washington, DC, United States, a Junior Fellow in the Global Research Network Think Tank, United Kingdom, an Early Stage Researcher at the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT), Rotterdam, the Netherlands, a resident research fellow at the Center for United Nations Constitutional Research - CUNCR, Brussels, Belgium, an Energy policy expert at the Lebanese Oil & Gas Initiative - LOGI, Beirut Lebanon, an EU commission Marie Curie Fellow at Tsinghua University School of Law, THCEREL-Center for Environmental, Natural Resources & Energy Law, at the CRAES-Chinese Research Academy on Environmental Sciences in Beijing (China) and at the Business School, Research Center for Climate Change and Trade and at Beijing Normal University. He also worked as a researcher in several European and Italian institutes and universities such as the University Institute of European Studies (IUSE) and Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale, Novara. Imad was a trainee lawyer at the Jad Law Firm reviewing international conventions related to conventional energy. He holds a Phd in Law from the Institute of Law, Politics and Development (DIRPOLIS), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy; a master in European Interdisciplinary Studies, from the College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium, and a Bachelor in Law from the Lebanese University "Filiere Francophone de Droit", Beirut, Lebanon.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor at the Environmental Policy Group
- Research Fellows
Ingrid is Assistant Professor at the Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen University. Ingrid does research in the fields of environmental change, mobilities, and governance, with a focus on the topic of environmental/climate change migration. She has been awarded a personal grant (VENI, NWO) to study environmental migration in the digital age, which she will work on from October 2016-2020.
She holds a PhD in International Relations, obtained at the University of Kent (UK) in February 2014, on the securitisation of climate migration, funded by the UK Economic Social Research Council. She is research fellow with the Earth System Governance Network; permanent member of the Management Committee of the EU COST ACTION on climate change and migration which ran until 2015; and serves as an expert for the EU, the Dutch Government, the UN and for several NGOs. She co-chaired the international conference on Disclosing Sustainability held at Wageningen University (June 2016), for which she led the theme on citizens and transparency.
Leino has previously worked on several research projects in which she's been combining her expertise in geography and environmental policy. Her recent research and publication topics include, e.g., rural perspectives on environmental justice, the complexity of justice in critical mineral conflicts, and the questions of acceptance in the contexts of peat phaseout and mineral exploration. She has also published research on the co-management of natural resources in Finland.
Calling herself a theory nerd, Leino enjoys delving into the ways to structure and understand different phenomena in environmental policy. In addition to research, Leino is interested in working at the research-policy interface and rarely turns down opportunities to network, travel, and work in international settings.
Job Titles:
- Professor of International Relations at UNIVA
- Research Fellows
José Manuel Leal is a Professor of International Relations at UNIVA-Mexico. His research focuses on Transnational Climate Change Governance, and the influence of foreign actors in local environmental politics, with a focus in Latin American cities; the contribution from the existing global economic system to the current environmental crisis, social systems innovation and policy transition; and the formulation of other possible solutions. He has collaborated in research projects with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) from the United Nations, and the Latin American Union of Municipalities (UIM). His professional experience also includes the design and coordination of environmental cooperation projects, academic collaborations, developed during his time as International Cooperation Coordinator at the Foreign Affairs Office from the State of Jalisco, Mexico. International Organizations Coordinator at the University of Guadalajara; as well as General Coordinator of FIDALE, a Mexican-Spanish NGO.
He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Ottawa. Dr. Leal also holds a Master in International Economic Relations and Cooperation from the University of Guadalajara, as well as an Honor's Bachelor in International Business from the University of the Atemajac Valley in México (UNIVA).
Job Titles:
- Research Fellows
- Student at the Department for Thematic Studies
Maria Jernnäs is a PhD student at the Department for Thematic Studies - Environmental Change, Linköping University, Sweden. She is affiliated with the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research. Her background is in Environmental Science and International and European Relations and her research interest concerns global climate governance, with a particular focus on the discourses and practices of climate governance in the post-Paris climate regime.
Milja Heikkinen (MSc., BA) is working in Urban Environmental Policy research group, University of Helsinki. Currently, she is working for a project "Justice in climate policy" of the Finnish Climate Change Panel.
Her PhD project is about the role of cooperation networks in urban climate change mitigation and adaptation. The thesis is article-based, covering global, national and local level networks. The first article analyses what kind of change C40 member cities advocate for dealing with climate change. The second article tests statistically the association between network membership and progress in adaptation planning in 377 cities globally. The third article (in review) analyses multi-level climate related networking in Helsinki, Madrid and Stockholm, and fourth (in review) studies participation-based structures and performance of a climate-related city-to-business network in Helsinki.
Milja is interested in science communication and teaching. She has developed the webpage and Twitter profile for UEP group, and published popular articles and blog posts in Finnish. For four years, she has been teaching a bachelor-level course "Multidisciplinary environmental research" and participated in co-supervising bachelor's and master's theses.
During her MSc studies, she worked as a research assistant in multidisciplinary research project "AQUADIGM- The function and management of aquatic ecosystems in the changing environment: the effects of paradigm shifts", focusing on environmental history. Before AQUADIGM, she worked as a research assistant in City of Helsinki Environment centre measuring the City Biodiversity Index in the context of Helsinki.
Milja holds MSc in Environmental Science and Policy and BA in Spanish Philology, both from the University of Helsinki. Topic of her Master's Thesis was the politicization of wastewater overflows in the region of the Vantaa River. A research article based on it was published in the journal Water Policy. In her Bachelor's Thesis she did an ecocritical analysis for a selection of poems from Poeta en Nueva York by Federico García Lorca.
Mirza Sadaqat Huda is Lead Researcher at the Climate Change in Southeast Asia Programme (CCSEAP) at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore. He contributes to CCSEAP projects on energy, climate change and natural resource governance in Southeast Asia. He is interested in policy-relevant research on energy transition and climate change, the European Union's (EU) Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and cross-border electricity grids. He has published in Environmental Research Letters, International Affairs, Energy Policy, Energy Research and Social Science, Geoforum, Water International and the Oxford Handbook of Energy Politics. Mirza's op-eds have been published by Policy Forum, the East Asia Forum, the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He contributed to policy reports published by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and the United Nations Environment Programme. Mirza is the author of ‘Energy Cooperation in South Asia: Utilizing Natural Resources for Peace and Sustainable Development', published by Routledge in April 2020.
Prior to ISEAS, Mirza worked at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Academy and the Nanyang Technological University. He also provided consultancy services as an Energy Security Expert to the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities (OCEEA), Vienna. Mirza received the 2020-2021 Clean EDGE Asia Fellowship sponsored by the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Bureau of Energy Resources at the U.S. Department of State.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Transnational Governance at the Political Science Department
- Member of the Task Force
- Research Fellows
Philip Schleifer is Associate Professor of Transnational Governance at the Political Science Department at the University of Amsterdam. Previously to his appointment at the UvA, he was a Max Weber Fellow and a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute. Philip holds a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics.
Philip's research agenda focuses on transnational sustainability governance. His past and present projects investigate the effectiveness and transparency of voluntary standards in global value chains, the design of hybrid biofuel governance in the European Union, and the political economy of sustainable commodity production in emerging economies.
Philip's work has been published by high impact journals, including Review of International Political Economy, Earth System Governance Journal, Regulation & Governance, Global Environmental Politics, Governance, Global Food Security, and Ecological Economics. His recently published book Global Shifts: Business, Politics, and Deforestation in a Changing World Economy (MIT Press, Earth System Governance Series), examines what global shifts in markets and power mean for the politics and governance of agricultural supply chains.
At the Earth System Governance Project, Philip is member of the Task Force on the Governance of Nature and Biodiversity.
Pranab Kumar Mandal is a PhD Candidate at the Department of English of Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He is also working as an Assistant Professor of English at Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur, India. With an orientation in environmental humanities, his research interest lies in the indigenous ways of environmental governance, which is characterised by animist cosmovision, ecospiritual reverence, natureculture entanglements, and regenerative practices. With rapid human consumption of natural energy leading to species extinction every single day, he feels that spiritual connection with nature appears to be a viable way to re-indigenise the human habitation on earth to make it sustainable. Having a sacred feeling for the earth elements can essentially lessen, if not solve the problems of earth-slaughtering, leading to a sustainable governance of the ecosystem. With particular focus on some of the indigenous communities and their treatment of forests across the world, he engages with how indigenous knowledge of environmental governance is inherently imbued with human-nonhuman reciprocity, how indigenous approach to nature is ecospiritual and conservational, and how these intersections can foster an eco-epistemology that enforces environmental sustainability.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender and Race
- Research Fellows
Stefanie Fishel is an assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Race Studies specializing in political theory and global politics. She earned her doctorate from The Johns Hopkins University in 2011 with specializations in International Relations and Political Theory. In 2005, she received her MA from the University of Victoria in Victoria, Canada. Her research focuses on human and nonhuman bodies and their metaphorical and material relationship to their political and cultural communities and the biosphere.
Her book, The Microbial State: Global Thriving and the Body Politic (2017), is available through the University of Minnesota Press. The book focuses on human bodies and their metaphorical and material relationship to the discipline and practice of global politics. It incorporates philosophical discussions of biopolitics and community into medical and scientific analysis to develop an embodied and material ethics of transnational, trans-species, and trans-biome collectivities and responsibility.
Her research interests include the gendered and racialized experiences of environmental harm; new materialism and posthumanism; critical animal studies; science and technology studies; and global environmental theory centering on climate change and the Anthropocene.
Thais L. Ribeiro is a Ph.D. candidate at the International Relations Institute (IREL), University of Brasília (UnB). Her dissertation explores how subnational actors commit to global climate governance using exploratory statistics and a qualitative assessment with process tracing, focusing on the Brazilian federated units. She is a researcher at the research group on International System in the Anthropocene and Global Climate Change (CLIM), linked to the ESG Research Centre Brasilia. She is also engaged in research about environmental justice and knowledge co-production based on decolonial theories.
VIOLA Eduardo and BASSO, Larissa (2014): Earth Stewardship, Climate Change, and Low Carbon Consciousness: Reflections from Brazil and South America", in: Earth Stewardship: linking ecology and ethics in theory and practice, Ricardo Tozzi et al (orgs.
BASSO, Larissa and VIOLA, Eduardo (2014): Chinese energy policy progress and challenges in the transition to low carbon development, 2006-2013. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional, v. 57, special edition, p. 174-192. DOI: 10.1590/0034-7329201400211