Welcome! I am an environmental social scientist (human geographer and anthropologist) and Assistant Professor of Marine Science & Policy at Hawai’i Pacific University.

I conduct research about how people interact with marine and freshwater environments, how they perceive change, risk, and benefits, and how we can make environmental governance more equitable and sustainable. I teach courses on sustainability, natural resource management, environmental justice, oceans governance, and geographic information systems (GIS). I also mentor students using community-engaged methods and supervise student-led research.

My research uses a political ecology approach to understand issues of equity, procedural justice, and distributional justice in natural resource management. I focus on small-scale food producers like coastal fishers, and farmers in freshwater contexts. I consider how diverse communities and individuals participate in institutions and decision-making processes, and how resulting policies and management actions inform fair or inequitable outcomes. My work explores conceptualizations and practices of food sovereignty, and the non-market benefits people derive from nature for their well-being and subsistence. I also examine adaptive capacity of systems and communities facing climate change and natural disaster risks, and the effects of colonialism on our environmental organizations.  My research focuses on Pacific Island (Oceania) contexts and intersects with issues of biodiversity conservation, common-pool resource management , and Indigenous knowledge, values, and sovereignty.

I use qualitative and mixed-methods, including ethnographic and participatory research methods, and I seek to engage with communities and the issues they are concerned about in my research.

Fa’afetai Lava – Terima Kasih- Mahalo Nui Loa – Thank you for visiting my page!