People

Director:
Pete Brosius is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia and director of the Center for Integrative Conservation Research.  As well, he teaches in a graduate program that is focused on Ecological and Environmental Anthropology. He serves as an associate editor of the journal Human Ecology, was past president of the Anthropology and Environment Section, American Anthropological Association, is a member of the IUCN Commission on Economic, Environmental and Social Policy (CEESP) Co-Management Working Group and the World Commission on Protected Areas/CEESP Theme on Indigenous and Local Communities, Equity and Protected Areas (TILCEPA).  In 2005, Dr. Brosius was awarded the Lourdes Arizpe Award in Anthropology and Environment.  Dr. Brosius' research in Environmental Anthropology focuses on political ecology and on the cultural politics of conservation at both local and global scales.  Previously, his research focused on international environmental politics in Sarawak, especially as this pertained to the international campaign focused on Penan.  Recently he has been working with the Kelabit community in Sarawak to develop a project called “Protected Area Planning and Implementation in Pulong Tau National Park.”  In conjunction with the ACSC initiative, he continues a research trajectory focused on global conservation and the politics of scale, with a particular focus on ecoregional planning and conservation finance.  Brosius has published in journals such as American Anthropologist, Current Anthropology, Conservation Biology, Ambio, Global Environmental Change, Society and Natural Resources, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Identities and Human Ecology.

Associate Director:
Nik Heynen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Adjunct Associate Professor in Anthropology, an affiliate with the Institute of Women’s Studies at the University of Georgia and the Associate Director of Center for Integrative Conservation Research.  His research interests include urban political ecology, social theory, and social movement theory with specific interests in environmental and anti-hunger politics. His main research foci relate to the analysis of how social power relationships, including class, race and gender are inscribed in the transformation of nature/space, and how in turn these processes contribute to interrelated and interdependent connections between nature, space and social reproduction.   He is in the early stages of developing two new research projects related to the role of citizen science within the contexts of climate change activism and environmental justice.  He is an editor for Antipode: A Journal of Radical Geography and book series editor for the Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation series at the University of Georgia Press.  He is an editorial board member for Capitalism Nature Socialism and Human Geography.  He was recently awarded the Hallsworth Visiting Professorship at the University of Manchester, UK.  Heynen has published in Antipode: A Journal of Radical Geography, The Annals of the Association of American Geographers,The Professional Geographer, Urban Geography, ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, Urban Affairs Review, Environment and Planning A, Capitalism Nature Socialism, and Urban Ecosystems among other journals.

Post-Doctoral Researcher:
Meredith Welch-Devine is a post-doctoral research associate at CICR. She is currently studying the role of the social sciences in conservation planning, and her research interests include political ecology, state theory, common-pool resources, and policy implementation. Meredith’s dissertation research focused on the implementation of the European Union conservation initiative Natura 2000 in the Basque province of Soule. Meredith received her PhD in anthropology at the University of Georgia and holds a certificate in Conservation Ecology and Sustainable Development from UGA. She received her B.A. in sociology and anthropology from Washington and Lee University.

Administrator:
Katie Hendricks came to the ACSC project in September 2008.  She will be coordinating website management for www.tradeoffs.org, network development activities, information dissemination, communication with research partners and administration of the Center for Integrative Conservation Research.  Prior to this, Katie worked at the UGA Physical Plant Division, Human Resources Department. She graduated from Western Washington University in 2003 with a B.A. in English Literature.

Student Associates:
Danyel Addes is a research assistant for the ACSC project and a doctoral student in the Anthropology Department at the University of Georgia. Her interests include community based natural resource management, the politics of knowledge, common property theory, and marine protected areas. Her work will focus on design and decision-making processes within a community network of marine protected areas in Vanuatu. Before becoming a graduate student at UGA Danyel worked for Reef Environmental Education Foundation and at Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo FL. She received her B.A. in Social Thought and Political Economy from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst MA.  

Ted Maclin is a research assistant for the ACSC project and doctoral student in the Anthropology Department at the University of Georgia (UGA). His interests include the political ecology of conservation, the anthropology of organizations, and the dynamics of heterogeneous networks. His research focuses institutional relations, organizational culture, and network processes within the World Wildlife Fund International (WWF) Arctic Network Initiative, particularly focusing on the links between informal institutions, networked knowledge, and conservation outcomes. He was a co-organizer and participating researcher for the 2008 Event Ethnography of the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, where he researched the process of issue negotiation around the topic of biofuels. Before returning to graduate school at UGA, he received his M.S. in Botany from the University of Tennessee and worked for ten years managing environmental education programs at Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York.

Annie MacFadyen is a research assistant at CICR and a doctoral student at the University of Georgia (UGA).  Her research interests include livelihood sustainability, subsistence, and social resilience.  She plans to study the intersections between rural livelihoods and conservation agendas in the highlands of Vietnam.  Prior to coming to UGA, Annie worked with the Youth Corps in Boulder, Colorado and led backpacking trips in Alaska.  She received her B.A. in Environmental Biology and Classics from the University of Colorado.   

David Meek is a research assistant for the ACSC project and a doctoral student in the Anthropology Department at the University of Georgia (UGA). His interests include environmental education, social movements, and agroecology.  His research will focus on the role of environmental education within the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement. Prior to graduate school at UGA, David received his M.Sc. in Political Ecology and Conservation Biology from the Antioch New England Graduate School, and worked in Latin America on environmental education and sea turtle conservation projects.