People

Luisa Bedoya Taborda (PhD candidate)

Luisa is a PhD student at the University of Sydney where she studies climate change adaptation and violent conflict. Her research focuses on how justice and collaborative networks influence the impact of adaptation responses, such as Nature-based Solutions, on social stability and conflict. Luisa is from Colombia, South America. She holds a Bachelor of Laws, a Postgraduate Diploma in Environmental Law, and previously worked with the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense in the Marine Biodiversity and Coastal Protection Program. She also worked in the Land Restitution Unit, where she represented victims of armed conflict. Luisa submitted her Master’s thesis at James Cook University (under the supervision of Michele Barnes and Tiffany Morrison) in 2024, which developed a framework to integrate climate adaptation and peacebuilding and support synergistic action to address the cumulative impacts of climate change and violent conflict.

Carmen Dobszewicz (PhD Student)

Carmen is a PhD student at the University of Sydney focusing on human-shark interactions and the role projects and programs can play in coexistence. Carmen is from Toronto, Canada. She holds an undergraduate degree in biology from McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. She also completed a Master’s degree at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. Her master’s thesis investigated the impacts of climate change on sharks utilising epaulette sharks as a model species under the supervision of Prof Jodie Rummer. With a background in shark physiology, Carmen is taking an interdisciplinary approach to her doctoral thesis to meaningfully contribute to the field of human-shark interactions and their current mitigation measures.

Walter Galdames (PhD candidate)

Walter is a PhD student at the University of Sydney, researching the long-term impacts of projects on sustainability in communities and their environments. He holds a Bachelor of Physics Education with Honours and a master’s degree in physics with a focus on complex systems from the University of Concepción, Chile. His doctoral research at the School of Project Management applies systemic and network-based approaches to understand how projects influence social-ecological resilience and sustainability trajectories. Previously, he worked in environmental and science education and has collaborated with research groups in Chile on issues such as invasive species management and political polarisation using network analysis.

Charel Rocío González Salinas (PhD Student – external)

Charel is a PhD student at the Universidad Católica del Norte and the Coastal Social-Ecological Millennium Institute (SECOS) in Chile. Her research is part of the FONDECYT project 1231579, supervised by Pilar Haye and Stefan Gelcich, with Michele Barnes serving as an external supervisor. Charel’s doctoral work investigates scale mismatches between ecological and social connectivity in TURF systems (Territorial Use Rights for Fisheries) in north-central Chile. She holds a Bachelor’s in Marine Biology and a Master’s in Marine Ecology, where she focused on population genetics in marine invertebrates. Her current research builds on this foundation, combining molecular tools with social-ecological network approaches to address the complex, interdisciplinary challenges of small-scale fisheries management.

Sophie Robinson (PhD Student – external)

Sophie Robinson is a PhD student at the Melbourne School of Population and Health and works at the Centre for Sustainability and Business. Her research focuses on climate change, health, social-ecological systems and governance, and is supervised by Kathryn Bowen and Glenn Hoetker, with Michele Barnes serving as an external supervisor. Sophie’s doctoral work explores the role of governance in the climate-resilient development of healthcare systems and aims to identify particular governance structures, mechanisms and attributes that enhance adaptive and transformative capacities of healthcare systems and enables climate-resilient development.

Amber Datta (PhD, 2023)

Amber grew up in Hawai’i with a passion for the ocean and the communities that depend on it. Her PhD focused on governance of the Great Barrier Reef after mass coral bleaching. She previously held a B.A. in Environmental Analysis (Biology focus) from Pomona College and an M.S. in Resource Conservation from the University of Montana (UM). She also completed a certificate in Natural Resource Conflict Resolution at UM. Amber was a cotutelle PhD student at JCU and UM. Her PhD thesis contributed to our understanding of how to improve governance of rapidly changing coral reefs.

Sarah Sutcliffe (PhD, 2023)

Sarah completed her PhD at James Cook University, previously the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, in 2023. Her research primarily focused on improving food security, livelihoods and wellbeing in small-scale fishing communities in the face of social and environmental shocks, including COVID-19 and climate change. Her research is interdisciplinary: she works closely with both social and natural scientists, drawing on food systems theory, social network analysis and adaptation theory.

Henry Bartelet (PhD, 2023)

Henry was a doctoral student at James Cook University in Australia, where he worked, under the supervision of Graeme Cumming and Michele Barnes, on quantifying the socio-economic resilience of the Great Barrier Reef region and other Pacific communities that are economically dependent on coral reefs. He previously held a Bachelor in Economics and a Joint European Master Degree in System Dynamics. After his master degree, Henry worked for two years as an energy system modeler at DNV in Norway, in a research program to forecast the energy transition towards 2050.

Lucy Homes McHugh (PhD, 2023)

Lucy is an interdisciplinary social scientist, specialising in sustainability, public policy, governance, and climate change. Her PhD research contributed to our understanding of how social systems navigate climate risk and crisis across scales, with a focus on UNESCO’s World Heritage system and the Great Barrier Reef. She previously worked at the Centre for International Forestry Research in Indonesia in science communications. She has a Master’s in Development Practice and a Master’s in Public Policy. During part of her PhD tenure, she resided in the USA at the University of Michigan on a Fulbright scholarship.

Emmanuel Mbaru (PhD, 2019)

Dr. Mbaru obtained his PhD in Marine Science from James Cook University, Australia in 2019. His research focused on the diffusion of gated traps, a conservation technology, through networks of coastal fishers in Kenya, and the impacts of this technology innovation on both people (wellbeing) and ecosystems (fisheries functional diversity). Dr. Mbaru now works as a senior scientist at the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) and holds an AXA Postdoctoral research fellowship based at Lancaster University in the UK. He focuses on interdisciplinary research topics that examine the vulnerability of coastal communities and ecosystems to environmental change. His current interests are embedded in the emerging concepts in network science and fisheries ecology to better understand how and why conservation goes to scale.

Diego Salgueiro Otero (Visiting Fellow, 2019)

As a marine interdisciplinary scientist with research experience in MPAs and Ocean Health Index operationalisation, Diego obtained his PhD in Small-scale fisheries (SSF) adaptation to climate change  (University of Vigo, 2022).  Developing theoretical, conceptual, and empirical work applying a network perspective, his doctoral research (1) operationalised SSF frameworks worldwide, (2) introduced a novel Adaptation Framework for marine social-ecological systems, and (3) identified drivers and constraints of SSF resilience. Interested in social-ecological justice, Diego’s work focuses on the intersection between SSF communities, science and policy, and producing bottom-up climate change adaptation while lifting the voices of coastal communities.

Francis Commercon (Fulbright Scholar, 2018)

Francis joined the Social Dynamics and the Environment Lab while working as a Fulbright student researcher at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Gardens. His research examined social network predictors of wild meat consumption in southwest China. Specifically, he was interested in how social sharing of wild meat shaped behaviors, attitudes, and norms about wildlife consumption. Subsequently as a Masters student at Yale School of the Environment, his research examined environmental knowledge making and policy outcomes for migratory shorebirds in the East Asian Australasian Flyway. He is passionate about the social processes that construct how people know about and conserve resilient socio-ecological systems.