​Congratulations to John as a newly minted PhD! John successfully defended his dissertation "When the rain falls: Adaptation to compound disasters and climate unpredictability in natural resource dependent communities of rural Haiti". John now resides in Ft. Collins, CO with his growing family and works as the Socioeconomic Monitoring Coordinator for the U.S. National Park Service. Have fun teaching your kids whitewater rafting - we will miss you at the HECLab!

Congratulations, Kaila, on your recently published manuscript "Trauma ≠ Identity"! You can read Kaila's piece in UGA's The Classic Journal  

​Don and five collaborators were awarded the UGA Team Impact Award from the Office of the Vice President for Research. Description of the team's work can be found here.  "The Team Impact Award recognizes the critical contributions made by crosscutting teams in addressing today’s complex challenges. Specifically, the award recognizes a team for excellence in innovative and impactful scholarship that either has or soon promises to fundamentally advance knowledge, understanding and/or applications in ways not achievable by individual investigators or single disciplinary approaches alone"

​As one of the finalists for the Anthropology and  Environment Society's Roy Rappaport Prize, Shelly was invited to write a blog post about her research for the society's blog page. Congratulations! You can read it here. Photo by Shelly. 

​​Kaila, Gabrielle (both pictured) and Amaja won the Society for Applied Anthropology's Best Student poster award for their entry "Evolving Environmental Social Contracts Manifest Through Social Media". Congratulations, and thank you Andressa for all your contributions. Poster can be seen here. 

Bruno Ubiali is a 2022 Halperin Memorial Fund recipient from the Society for Economic Anthropology for his proposed research "Present but Invisible: Revealing Perceptions of Forest Products in the Eastern Amazon". The award will pay for predissertation research and for him to present his work at the 2023 SEA conference.

Abstract: The ongoing expansion of government-sponsored logging and cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon collides with Indigenous communities that pursue forest-based livelihoods. This predissertation research aims at understanding Indigenous and large-scale farmers’ cultural notions of land, which will  contribute to revealing the cultural and social values of forest-based livelihoods and industrial agriculture in the Amazon and elsewhere. I will undertake this predissertation research in Santarém, Brazil, where Indigenous livelihoods and corporate interests currently are – and have historically been – in stark contrast. I will meet academic partners, establish relationships with communities, and collect data that will inform my dissertation research design. 

​How to discuss desirable scenarios for cities using alternative visions and scenario framework for management of nature in cities? Recognizing multiple values for our relationship with nature in urban settings can help to co-design greener and more sustainable urban futures. This is recent effort led by Andressa Mansur as a result of a collaborative workshop with colleagues from IPBES Scenarios and Models assessment, The Nature Conservancy and urban ecology experts. The publication offers a framework for creating alternative visions for nature in cities through four components, including the leverage points for reinforcing social-ecological feedbacks that draw on co-benefits from multiple nature perspectives, assessment of indirect impacts of cities on biodiversity, development of multi-scale monitoring and development of scenarios for nature in cities.  The publication can be found here. 

Don, Andressa, Cydney and Scott Pippin in partnership with WWF, published a Topic Brief "The Impacts of Infrastructure Sector Corruption on Conservation" that contributes to the knowledge base of the Targeting Natural Resource Corruption (TNRC) Consortium, funded by USAID. The introductory brief helps conservation practitioners understand corruption risks throughout the infrastructure lifecycle, how the risks influence conservation outcomes, and how organizations may respond. The TNRC works to "improve biodiversity outcomes by equipping practitioners to address the threats posed by corruption to wildlife, fisheries, and forests". The brief is available here and a recording of the presentation of the brief along with a panel discussion is available here. 

Jon Hallemeier PhD, successfully defended his dissertation "Conflict, Uncertainty, and Collaboration in Multiple Use Land Management Planning for a Southern Appalachian National Forest" and is now Dr. J. Hallemeier! 

He has already started working in his new position as an ORISE Research Fellow at the Environmental Lab of the US Army Corp of Engineer's Engineering Research and Development Center. We are grateful for Jon as a friend and HECLab member and wish him the best of success as he moves on!

A team of collaborators spanning specialties in anthropology, engineering, ecology, economics, law, and policy published a commentary on the potential value and benefits from increased research and investments in nature-based solutions. The manuscript is available here.