March 20, 2025: IRES Student Seminar with Sam Gorle and Verena Rossa-Roccor

Talk summary:

Habitat loss and land use change are significant drivers of biodiversity loss. In highly transformed agricultural landscapes, converting large tracts of farmland to habitat can be socio-economically prohibitive, but the restoration of small habitat patches is both feasible and beneficial for species persistence, particularly through improvements to habitat connectivity. We assess how the addition of small habitat patches might impact species persistence in the agriculturally intensive region of Southern Ontario, by simulating the creation of hedgerows along crop field edges and evaluating the resulting changes in metapopulation capacity across multiple taxa. We then compare the performance of different restoration patterns and identify areas that should be prioritized for restoration to sustain metapopulations. By integrating concepts from diversified agriculture and landscape connectivity, we can plan for working landscapes that support biodiversity and meet land conservation goals, while maintaining agricultural productivity. 

Bio:

Sam is an MSc student in the WoRCS Lab and the Three E’s Lab, co-supervised by Dr. Claire Kremen and Dr. Joséphine Gantois. She is most interested in landscape connectivity, and working on solutions to protect biodiversity in human-modified landscapes. She has previously completed a BSc in Honours Biology at McGill University, where she completed an Honours thesis focused on protected area planning and landscape connectivity in the greater Montreal region. When not at her computer, Sam loves to read, go to the beach, and spend time with friends and family (many of whom are animals). 

Talk summary:

A growing number of academics advocate for political action on climate change. Very little is known about their strategic capacity or how they experience this role. There is also a paucity of training opportunities for academics who want to become more effective advocates or activists.

In this talk, I will present findings from my research that explored the experiences, skills, and knowledge gaps of academic advocates through 17 key informant interviews with academic advocates and activists in Canada, the US, and the UK. I compared these findings to insights on effective change making from a multidisciplinary literature base in the political sciences, community organizing, social psychology, and marketing.

I found that participants generally fall into four archetypes based on participants’ knowledge mobilization (KMb) tactics: the advisor, the advocate, the activist, and the insider. These archetypes are fluid categories along two axes: (i) where participants exert their influence – inside vs. outside of the policy community – and (ii) how they approach their KMb activities from “power navigator” to “truth teller”. The former engages in the realities of politics inside the policy community (e.g., civil servant, partisan activities, or lobbying) or as an outsider via tactics such as social movements or civil disobedience. The latter aims to maintain the status of an “objective” advisor via tactics such as acting as an expert witness or public intellectual. The choice of strategy for most participants is intuitive, depends largely on one’s concept of what is right or wrong (“identity”), and is based on implicit theories of change grounded in beliefs and assumptions rather than an empirical evidence base. The knowledge gap persists because (i) belief systems guide decision making among academic advocates; and (ii) because systemic realities such as severe time constraints, lack of incentives or resources, or fear of repercussions may prohibit the academic advocate from thoroughly engaging in the literature and applying the insights to their own work.

I will also briefly introduce a workshop that emerged from my dissertation work. The workshop was composed based on a multidisciplinary literature and focuses on building strategic capacity with approaches from community organizing and power navigation. It integrates findings from the key informant interviews in order to specifically appeal to academics seeking to grow their advocacy/activism skill set.

Bio:

Verena left her career as a physician because she became too frustrated with the limited impact she had on the systemic factors that made her patients sick. She then went on to complete a Master’s degree in public health at UBC. It was there that she became increasingly interested in the concept of knowledge mobilization, that is, how can research evidence more effectively shape policy decisions?

Fast forward a few years and Verena, now a PhD candidate at IRES (working with co-supervisors David Boyd (IRES) and Paul Kershaw (School of Population and Public Health)), explores ways in which academics conduct knowledge-to-action activities in the environmental policy realm. In her understanding of the topic, she draws on a wide range of literatures from policy theory over moral psychology to social movement scholarship. Spoiler alert: dissemination of knowledge – no matter how well communicated – is not enough; the world of policy making is so much more complicated and requires strategies that may not sit well with many academics. Throughout her PhD, Verena has supported academic groups and non-profit organizations as a strategy and knowledge mobilization consultant and hopes to expand this work upon her (imminent?!) completion of the PhD.