To a large degree, I am a walking embodiment of the transdisciplinary ethos of ERS. My interest in the “environment” originated through extensive study of Ontario natural history during my youth. At that point, it seemed obvious that science was the path to pursue to make a difference. Thus, I pursued undergraduate and graduate training in conservation biology, ecology and evolutionary biology, pollination ecology and systematics. I was on the trajectory to be a biologist.
As time went by, however, I noticed a variety of tensions with this path. First, biologists often claimed that their research was useful to society when they wanted to obtain funding, but in reality it wasn’t. Second, I noticed that other biology students had very little experience with or knowledge about living, breathing organisms in the field. Third, I realized that biologists are generally trained in what Medawar called “the art of the soluble” rather than in how to look at many of the most important dimensions of the “complex” -- what some scholars call "wicked" -- problems we now wrestle with around the globe.
I concluded that conservation now requires greater attention to human interaction and human values, and thus my research took a decided shift towards the social sciences and humanities. Despite this shift, my biological background is never far behind and influences everything that I do. I think it is critical for us to incorporate both the natural and social sciences in our approach to environmental issues, thereby embracing all the paradoxes and poles of current environmental thought, many of which revolve around the embedded duality between facts and values.
In addition to the specific research topics mentioned on my homepage, my intellectual passions include broad topics such as the following:
Academic websites can be pretty formal and impersonal, so I'd like to also tell you a little bit more about me:
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