People are an essential part of seascapes- we live, travel and recreate on coasts and in oceans, rely on them for our culture and livelihoods, draw on them for our subsistence and well-being.
Our relationship with the sea however has been underappreciated in Western culture, which has traditionally divided
I am an environmental social scientist working on interdisciplinary research about how people interact with their environment and perceive change, risk, and benefits related to nature. I work in dynamic marine and freshwater environments, I focus on issues of equity and justice in how resources are managed; in particular, how institutions and decision-making processes inform fair or inequitable outcomes for diverse stakeholders. I also examine adaptive capacity of systems and communities facing climate change and natural disaster risks, the effects of colonialism on our approaches to management and relationship to the environment, and the non-market benefits people derive from nature for well-being and subsistence. My work centers on coastal environments, with additional experience with freshwater environments. I focus on small-scale food producers like fishers and farmers, and intersects with issues of biodiversity conservation, common-pool resource management (especially marine and freshwater resources), and indigenous and traditional knowledge, values, and sovereignty. I am a human geographer trained in ethnographic and mixed-methods with a background in anthropology..
Barbara Quimby, PhD 