Lisa Powell

Contact Details

Research Interests

Bio

Lisa J. Powell is a postdoctoral researcher jointly appointed in the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia and the Department of Geography at the University of the Fraser Valley. She works with the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm and the Agriburban Research Centre. She completed a Ph.D. and M.A. in American Studies and Sustainability from the University of Texas at Austin, M.S. in mathematics from Vanderbilt University, and B.A. in mathematics from Harvard University. Her work focuses on conflicts and negotiations over agricultural land use; agriburbia; food systems and policy; natural resource extraction and transport (coal, oil); and cultural meanings and interpretations of foods, including pumpkins.

Email: lisa.powell@ubc.ca

Projects

Courses

Featured Publications

Michele Koppes

Associate Professor, Department of Geography

Contact Details

http://blogs.ubc.ca/koppes/ http://www.geog.ubc.ca/persons/michele-koppes/

Bio

Michele Koppes is appointed in Geography, not at IRES, and instead is a Faculty Associate of our unit. She may supervise students in our RES graduate program.

http://www.geog.ubc.ca/persons/michele-koppes/

http://blogs.ubc.ca/koppes/

Jordi Honey-Rosés

Honorary Research Associate

Research Interests

experiments, public space, urban, water

Bio

Dr. Jordi Honey-Rosés is an honorary Research Associate at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES). He is an environmental planner (University of Illinois, PhD) specialized in urban experimentation and impact evaluation. Currently, his primary affiliation is at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) as a Senior Researcher. He joined ICTA-UAB after eight years at the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia (2013-2021). He has published widely on urban experiments and impact evaluation in leading international scientific journals and his teaching has been recognized with the prestigious Killam Teaching Award of the University of British Columbia. He has university degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and a Master in Public Policy (MPP) from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Arvind Saraswat

Adjunct Professor

Bio

Arvind works as the Head of Air Quality Section (Assessments) at the BC Ministry of Environment and an Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability. In his current role at the Ministry of Environment, Arvind leads the section responsible for the review of air discharge applications under the Environmental Management Act (EMA) and the Environmental Assessment Act (EAA), and is also a statutory decision maker under EMA. Arvind’s team is responsible for making recommendations on permitting of air discharges, publishing regional air quality reports, leading airshed planning activities and issuing air quality advisories. In his previous role as the Head of Environmental Management Section (Omineca-Peace), Arvind led regional permitting and compliance activities for oil and gas, forest and municipal sectors.

Arvind is a professional engineer with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India and a PhD in Resource Management and Environmental Studies from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Arvind’s research interests include modeling small-area variations in concentrations of urban air pollutants, development of novel methods for estimating population exposure and air quality impact assessment for major industrial sources. Arvind has published his research in important scientific journals like Environmental Science and Technology and Transportation Research Part-F.

Shashi Enarth

Adjunct Professor

Contact Details

Research Interests

Bio

Shashi Enarth is a development activist from India, struggling to strike a balance between academia and praxis. Starting his career as a community organizer, he has worked with low income segments of the population, particularly with farming communities in India, Nigeria and Tanzania. His area of interest is: building community-based self-governing people’s institutions that can safeguard the interests of its members through sustainable and equitable use of all forms of capital, especially natural and human resources. A good part of his 25 year development career saw him struggle with implementation of development policies that mandated decentralization of fiscal, administrative and political powers against a backdrop of a political economy that is shaped by traditional institutions and forces of centralization. In the process, he got involved in policy research and advocacy initiatives through NGOs in India and as a consultant to The World Bank in Africa. His current research interests, therefore, focusses on understanding barriers to equity and sustainability in the geo-political context of developing economies. Before taking the current sabbatical, he was a senior member of BASIX Social Enterprise Group, an Indian conglomeration of 15 organizations working on a mission to promote large scale sustainable livelihoods.

Shashi is a trained social worker who returned to school to do a PhD that explored the relationship between the processes of decentralization and democratization and its impact on good governance. He is an IRES/UBC Alumni, during the days of RMES!

Projects

Courses

Featured Publications

Alexa Tanner

PhD with Stephanie Chang, 2022
Grants and Contracts Manager

Contact Details

LinkedIn
Twitter
alexa.tanner@gmail.com

Research Interests

Environment, Policy and Decision-making, Resilience

Bio

Alexa was a PhD student studying how people perceive and make decisions pertaining to natural disaster risk, supervised by Dr. Stephanie Chang. Her work addresses the social aspects of natural disasters with an emphasis on earthquakes and flooding.

As a member of MEOPAR’s Maritime Transportation Disruption project, she studyied risk perceptions of the marine transportation system at the organizational level, looking at both system resilience and vulnerabilities.

Reach her at:
LinkedIn, Twitter and alexa.tanner@gmail.com

Dana James

PhD w/ Hannah Wittman, 2022
Postdoctoral Researcher, Faculty of Land and Food Systems, UBC

Contact Details

dana.james[at]ubc[dot]ca

https://twitter.com/dmjames_

Research Interests

Climate change, Community-based research, Food security, Food Systems, Land Reform, Management of biodiversity, Political ecology, Political economy, Resource governance and management, Science-policy interface

Bio

Dana obtained her PhD from the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability and the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm (CSFS) with supervision from Dr. Hannah Wittman. Her doctoral research investigated the spatial distribution of agroecological indicators in Brazil; participation in agroecology and land-based movements and the relationship between these movements and the state; and the contributions of agroecology to rural peoples’ well-being. Her postdoctoral research expands on this through a partnership with seven different peasant farming organizations across Latin America to collaboratively develop indicators of agroecology, with a focus on topics like gender equity, agroecological practice use, and livelihoods.

Dana graduated from Penn State University’s Schreyer Honors College in 2013 with dual degrees in Environmental Resource Management and Community, Environment, and Development, and dual minors in International Agriculture and Watersheds and Water Resources. She was granted a 2013 US-UK Fulbright award to attend Newcastle University, where she completed her MPhil in Geography. Her prior experience includes consulting for the US government’s Feed the Future initiative to improve knowledge-sharing amongst agricultural development practitioners; working as a Research Associate on a USAID-funded project assessing Cambodia’s agricultural training and education system; and conducting research on the effects of climate and land use change on a keystone tree species in Spain under a National Science Foundation grant.

Dana’s PhD at UBC was supported by a Vanier CGS Award; UBC’s Public Scholar Initiative, Four Year Doctoral Fellowship, and International Tuition Award; the Liu Institute for Global Issues; Mitacs; P.E.O. International; and SSHRC.

Last updated May 2022

Email: dana.james [at] ubc.ca

Featured Publications

Sampson, D., Cely-Santos, M., Gemmill-Herren, B., Babin, N., Bernhart, A., Bezner Kerr, R., Blesh, J., Bowness, E., Feldman, M., Gonçalves, A. L., James, D., Kerssen, T., Klassen, S., Wezel, A., & Wittman, H. (2021). Food Sovereignty and Rights-Based Approaches improve Food Security and Nutrition: A systematic review. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. https://doi.org/doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2021.686492

James, D.* & Bowness, E.* (2021). Growing and Eating Sustainably: Agroecology in Action. Fernwood Publishing.

Ricciardi, V., Mehrabi, Z., Wittman, H., James, D., Ramankutty, N. (2021). Higher yields and more biodiversity on smaller farms. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00699-2

James, D.*, Bowness, E.*, Robin, T.*, McIntyre, A., Dring, C., Desmarais, A. A. & Wittman, H. (2021). Dismantling and Rebuilding the Food System after COVID-19: Ten Principles for Redistribution and Regeneration. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 10(2), 1–23. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2021.102.019

James, D. & Mack, T. (2020). Toward an Ethics of Decolonizing Allyship in Climate Organizing: Reflections on Extinction Rebellion Vancouver. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 11, 32–53. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800881099.00006

Bowness, E.*, James, D.*, Desmarais, A. A., McIntyre, A., Robin, T., Dring, C. & Wittman, H. (2020). Risk and responsibility in the corporate food regime: research pathways beyond the COVID-19 crisis. Studies in Political Economy, 101(3), 245–263. https://doi.org/10.1080/07078552.2020.1849986

Wittman, H., James, D. & Mehrabi, Z. (2020). Advancing food sovereignty through farmer-driven digital agroecology. International Journal of Agriculture and Natural Resources, 47(3), 235–248. https://doi.org/10.7764/ijanr.v47i3.2299

Selina Agbayani

MSc with Andrew Trites, 2023
Aquatic Biologist for Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Contact Details

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sagbayani/

Research Interests

Marine Mammal Science, Conservation Science, Ecosystem stressors, Marine Spatial Planning, Geographic Information Science, Resilience

Bio

Selina Agbayani began her career while pursuing a B.Sc. in Forest Sciences from the University of British Columbia (UBC). After graduation, she gained experience in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) through the Landscape Ecology and Water Tracer Labs at UBC. She then continued her professional development with the Advanced Diploma GIS Program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). Selina has combined a passion for natural systems and conservation issues with a specialization in landscape-scale ecological data and spatial analysis. This has led her to become involved in various projects with non-profit organizations such as the Community Mapping Network and World Wildlife Fund – Canada. In her work there, Selina became interested in marine ecosystems, and eventually came to UBC to study grey whales. Selina now works as an Aquatic Biologist for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, working on Cumulative Impact Mapping for Marine Spatial Planning.

Featured Publications

Agbayani S., 2022. Energy requirements of grey whales. Master’s thesis. University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC. [Embargoed until October 2023].

Clarke Murray C, NE Kelly, JC Nelson, GEP Murphy and S Agbayani. 2022. Cumulative impact mapping and vulnerability of Canadian marine ecosystems to anthropogenic activities and stressors. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Res. Doc. 2021/XXX. vi. + 52 p.

DFO. 2021. Cumulative impact mapping and vulnerability of Canadian marine ecosystems to anthropogenic activities and stressors. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Sci. Advis. Rep. 2021/nnn.

Agbayani S, SMEFortune and AW Trites.2020. Growth and development of North Pacific gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus). Journal of Mammalogy 101:742-754.

Agbayani, S, CM Picco and HM Alidina. 2015. Cumulative impact of bottom fisheries on benthic habitats: a quantitative spatial assessment in British Columbia, Canada. Ocean and Coastal Management 116:423-434.

Clarke Murray C, S Agbayani, N Ban. 2015a. Cumulative effects of planned industrial development and climate change on marine ecosystems. Global Ecology and Conservation 4:110-116.

Clarke Murray C, S Agbayani, N Ban, HM Alidina. 2015b. Advancing marine cumulative effects mapping: An update in Canada’s Pacific waters. Marine Policy 58:71-77.

Ewins, PJ, KA McDonald, S Agbayani. 2014. The WWF Species Action Plan for Arctic Whales, 2014-2020. WWF Global Arctic Programme, Ottawa, Canada.

Okey, TA, HM Alidina, S Agbayani. 2015. Mapping ecological vulnerability to climate change in Canada’s Pacific marine ecosystems. Ocean and Coastal Management 106:35-38.

Reeves RR, PJ Ewins, S Agbayani, MP Heide-Jørgensen, KM Kovacs, C Lydersen, R Suydam, W Elliott, G Polet, Y van Dijk, R Blijleven. 2014. Distribution of endemic cetaceans in relation to hydrocarbon development and commercial shipping in a warming Arctic. Marine Policy 44:375-389.

WWF Global Arctic Programme. 2012. Important Marine Areas in the Arctic. [Atlas] Maps created by S Agbayani.

Samia Khan

Professor, Faculty of Education
Faculty Associate, Faculty of Applied Science: Media and Graphic Interdisciplinary Centre

Bio

Samia Khan is appointed in Education, not at IRES, and instead is a Faculty Associate of our unit. She may supervise students in our RES graduate program.

http://met.ubc.ca/person/samia-khan/

Selda Örs

Previous Visiting Professor

Contact Details

Email: selda.ors@ubc.ca

Tel: 604-862-4876

Bio

Selda Örs is an Assistant Professor at Ataturk University, Department of Agricultural Structure and Irrigation, Turkey. She has an M.S. degree in Land & Water Resources Management: Irrigated Agriculture, CIHEAM-Bari, and Ph.D. degree from Ataturk University. From 2012 to 2014 she continued her research at University of California Riverside (UCR) as a Visiting Scholar. Her research projects focus on irrigated agriculture, plant physiology under abiotic stress conditions and water quality.

IRES Visiting Professor term: May 1, 2016 to August 31, 2017

Email: selda.ors@ubc.ca

Tel: 604-862-4876