The Nguyen and Schott Labs - Carleton University
The GE3Ls team, based out of Carleton University, is engaged in a range of research activities and collaborative work to address the social, economic, and policy dimensions of mountain pine beetle management. While some individuals are leading project components, there is a tremendous amount of project component integration, and all contribute to each other’s research through regular team meetings.
Dr. Vivian Nguyen (left) is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Environmental and Interdisciplinary Science and the Department of Biology. Her research focuses on the interface of science, society, and policy within the themes of conservation, natural resource management (including fisheries and forestry), and food insecurity. Dr. Nguyen also has expertise in the human dimensions of environmental issues and mobilizing ecological knowledge into decisions, policy, and practice.
Dr. Stephan Schott (right) is a Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration, with a background in Natural Resource and Environmental Economics. He has worked extensively in interdisciplinary teams with indigenous governments and communities, natural scientists, engineers, and other social scientists. His research currently focuses on food security and Northern fisheries, common pool resource institutions, forestry governance and mountain pine beetle management, alternative energy and sustainable development in the Arctic, wildlife management and knowledge co-evolution, and energy strategies and carbon emission reduction programs in North America and Europe.
This GE3LS team is engaged in several integrated research activities. The Knowledge Mobilization effort (Jenna Hutchen, Valerie Berseth, Vivian Nguyen) has targeted how knowledge related to Mountain Pine Beetle is exchanged between experts, decision-makers, rightsholders, and stakeholders. In addition, they are identifying barriers that make it difficult to coordinate across jurisdictions and respond quickly to forest disturbances. The Policy Analysis effort (Chris Orr, Stephan Schott, Vivian Nguyen) has traced the different phases of MPB crisis response provincially in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and nationally. Recent team addition Emily Loewen works with Nguyen, Berseth, and Hutchen to study how these policy responses have been framed in news media coverage. To understand how people perceive the risks, benefits, and trade-offs of different forest management strategies, Berseth, Emma Neale, and Stephan Schott are planning community-based workshops with diverse rightsholders and stakeholders in focal areas of the project. Finally, to understand the risks of MPB for recreational forest users, Flavia Alves is studying the value of provincial parks for visitors, and their willingness to pay for more intensive management. From these combined efforts of the GE3LS team, the key deliverables will be the creation of tools for addressing communication, social, economic and regulatory factors that impact social acceptance and end-user adoption of genomics-informed applications related to the MPB outbreak. It is anticipated that this framework will enable more informed, trust-based, rapid decision-making, and adjustment of management practices.
Dr. Valerie Berseth is an environmental sociologist working in the areas of climate adaptation, conservation, and natural resource management. Her work investigates the meaning and value of wildness, and the ways that people understand and manage the risks of human interventions into nature, with a particular focus on genomic science and technology. She completed a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of British Columbia and is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University.
Dr. Christopher J. Orr seeks to understand how societies can better govern complex environmental challenges in Canada and globally. He recently co-edited Liberty and the Ecological Crisis: Freedom on a Finite Planet (Routledge). Dr. Orr is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Waterloo.
Several graduate students are key contributors to the GE3LS effort:
Jenna Hutchen is a PhD Candidate in Interdisciplinary Biology with Dr. Nguyen. Her research uses Social Network Analysis to understand how knowledge users access, value, and use knowledge about mountain pine beetle when making management decisions. Outside of academia, you can find her hiking, knitting, trying craft beers, or hanging out with her very old cat.
Flavia Alves is a PhD candidate in Public Policy at Carleton University, with a focus on the impact of telecommunication technologies on banking and labour. She is a senior editor for the journal Carleton Perspectives on Public Policy and has worked in the past year as a Teacher Assistant in courses related to environmental policy. She volunteers as a Guide’s leader and as an ESL teacher to disadvantaged students from her home country.
Emma Neale is a PhD Candidate in the School of Public Policy and Administration. Her research interests are in multi-disciplinary projects to combine economic, social and technical knowledge to enhance policy decisions.
Emily Loewen is a fourth-year undergraduate student in Dr. Nguyen’s Social Ecology lab. She is completing her undergraduate thesis examining how the Mountain Pine Beetle crisis is framed in the media and looking for connections between the subsequent policy and management responses. Outside of school she loves to read, daydream, and spend time connecting with family and friends.