Research Associates + Visiting Scholars

Cristina Adams

Associate Professor at the University of São Paulo-Brazil

Email:

cadams@usp.br

Website:

http://lattes.cnpq.br/7325616838190292

Associate Professor at the School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EACH), University of São Paulo (USP). Professor at the Environmental Management Department and Graduate Programs in Complex Systems Modeling (EACH), Applied Ecology (ESALQ/CENA) and Environmental Science (PROCAM). Visiting Training Fellow at the Department of Anthropology - University of Kent at Canterbury, UK (1999-2000). Guest Researcher at the Department of Geography Geology - University of Copenhagen (2011) and at the Institute for Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences in the Tropics and Subtropics - Hohenheim University (2012). Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Analysis of Social-Ecological Landscapes (CASEL, formerly ACT) and Ostrom Workshop, Indiana University (2015-16). Leader of the research group in Forest Governance/CNPq. Lead author of the Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, 2019) and the Brazilian Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Has experience in Human Ecology, forest governance and management by traditional populations in Brazil. Main research topics include forest governance, socio-ecological systems, protected areas, and Brazilian traditional populations.

Mateus Batistella

Email:

mbatiste@indiana.edu

Batistella's research is interdisciplinary: he focuses on landscape and vegetation ecology, land use and land use change, and research into geospatial innovations for agriculture and the environment. He is a researcher with the Brazilian Agricultural Research Organization and collaborating professor with the IU Graduate Program on Environment and Society/UNICAMP. Research interests: Geotechnologies, landscape ecology, and land change.

Jordan Blekking

Research Associate, CASEL

Email:

jblekkin@iu.edu

Jordan is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Geography. Jordan’s research investigates human-environmental interactions with a specific focus on food security and food systems. Jordan works predominantly in Southern Africa and collaborates regularly with researchers from the University of Zambia and the University of Cape Town, among others. Previously, he lived and worked in Zambia for three years, first as a Peace Corps Volunteer living and working in farming communities, and later conducting dissertation research supported by the Ostrom Workshop. He has published in Nature Food, World Development, Food Policy, Global Environmental Change, and Applied Geography. In 2020, Jordan was selected as a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship recipient.

Felipe Bravo Pena

Visiting Scholar, Pennsylvania State University

Email:

feb5124@psu.edu

Website:

https://felipebravopena.com/

My research explores the socioecological resilience of smallholder and Indigenous farming systems, with a focus on how governance, institutions, and agrobiodiversity influence adaptation to environmental and market-related challenges. I combine quantitative and participatory methods to study sustainability transitions and the institutional aspects of agroecology and rural livelihoods in the Global South. I am originally from Chile and hold a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree, a Master’s in Animal Sciences, a Master’s in Public Policy, and a Ph.D. from the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. I have worked as a lecturer at the University of Chile, served as a consultant for the Chilean Ministry of Agriculture, and collaborated on initiatives with international cooperation organizations including IICA, FAO, ECLAC, IDB, GIZ, and REAF-Mercosur in various Latin American countries. Currently, I am a visiting scholar in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education at Pennsylvania State University.

Kleverton Carvalho

Research Associate, CASEL

Email:

klmelo@iu.edu

Carvalho received a Ph.D. in international law from University of Buenos Aires in 2015 and in public administration from Federal University of Bahia in 2019. He works as adjunct professor in the Federal University of Sergipe in Brazil. Most of his research deals with the water governance, hydro-climatic risks, and Amazon and San Francisco river basins. As a research associate at CASEL, he is working on a research project examining the risks related to the forest fire and floods in the Amazon Western region.

Paulo Eduardo Massoca

CASEL Research Associate and PostDoctoral Fellow at Florida Atlantic University

Email:

pmassoca@gmail.com

Website:

https://sites.google.com/view/paulo-massoca/research-agenda

I am a social-environmental scientist bridging tools, theories, and methods from the social and natural sciences to examine the interplay among historical, social, economic, political, and ecological factors that underlie the relationship between humans and their environment. I have conducted most of my research in the Amazon River basin, examining the forces underlying deforestation, forest regrowth and restoration initiatives, and the governance and management of natural resources. I apply a social-ecological systems perspective and draw on mixed methods and multivariate analysis to integrate extensive fieldwork in forest plots and case studies with socioeconomic censuses, geospatial data analysis, archival research, discourse analysis, and participant observation.

Grania Power

Visiting Scholar, CASEL

Email:

g.power@uea.ac.uk

Website:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/grania-power/

Grania Power is a PhD candidate in Human Geography at the University of East Anglia and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the U.K. Her doctoral research focuses on "brightspots" of successful fire management, with positive outcomes for human wellbeing and conservation, in global tropical forests. She has used "top-down" geospatial surveying to identify brightspots of fire management success in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest at different scales, and "bottom-up" ethnographic research to investigate the enablers of effective fire management and its social and ecological outcomes in one of the brightspot sites, a social forest reserve in Pará state, in the Northeastern Amazon. Research interests: forest livelihoods and traditional knowledge, tropical forest and fire management, collaborative and integrated resource governance, climate change adaptation

Giridharan Ramasubramanian

Research Associate

Email:

giridharan.ramasubramanian@anu.edu.au

Ramasubramanian is a doctoral candidate in the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy in the Australian National University. In 2018, he received an Endeavour Research Fellowship and was based at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in Princeton University. He was also a forme visiting scholar in the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University. His research looks at the emergence and impact of institutional catalysts within a complex international institutional landscape. By focusing on trade and climate governance, his dissertation explores how the architecture of existing institutional arrangements has shaped the negotiation of regional institutions and how these institutions, in turn, have shaped that architecture.

Paulo Ramos

Research Associate, CASEL

Email:

josrdoss@iu.edu

Paulo Ramos, PhD and Master in Social Sciences, investigates the relationships between Black bodies, water, and territory in Brazil. His research examines how the leadership of Black women in peripheral communities in developing practices of care, survival, and water management exposes the environmental racism that shapes landscapes of violence and inequality. At the same time, it addresses issues of gender and ancestry in the experiences of Black populations, integrating art and research approaches to explore how artistic expressions, performances, and cultural practices reflect and document these dynamics. From a critical perspective on raciality and the history of slavery, his work analyzes how bodies of water become material and symbolic extensions of expropriation, as well as spaces of memory, ancestry, resistance, life-making, and artistic creation. Check out his latest Book: Bodies of Water https://a.co/d/0belCjNk

Mário Lúcio Sapucahy

Visiting Scholar, CASEL

Email:

ml.sapucahy@unesp.br

Mário Lúcio Sapucahy is bachelor in Geography from the Universidade do Vale do Paraíba - São José dos Campos, Master in Geography from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas and PhD in Geography from the Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho, UNESP - Rio Claro/SP. His master degree’s dissertation was on visitation and impact on the Paiolzinho trail - Pedra da Mina, Serra da Mantiqueira; and his PhD’s thesis on sustainability assessment of the urban form of the Residential Complex Pinheirinho dos Palmares II in São José dos Campos/SP. As a geographer, Sapucahy participated in projects in the area of environmental education, water resources and environmental conservation. At Origin Archeology he worked in several environmental licensing processes in the Southeast, Northeast and Midwest regions of Brazil. He is the author of “1822, a European botanist on a journey through the Vale do Paraíba”, a re-enactment novel that narrates the passage of the French botanist Auguste de Saint-Hilaire through the Vale do Paraíba in 1822. Sapucahy also worked as a photographic reporter in newspapers with regional and national circulation for 17 years, from 1989 to 2006, and held dozens of photographic exhibitions, mostly on his favorite subject, the landscape. Research interests: sustainability on ecoturism and on urban form. Geographical areas of specialization: Serra da Mantiqueira and Vale do Paraíba.

Sam Schramski

Special Project Editor at Earth Journalism Network; Research Affiliate — CASEL

Email:

sschramski@internews.org

Website:

samschramski.com

Sam Schramski is an environmental and climate journalist, editor, and researcher currently serving as Special Projects Editor at Earth Journalism Network, where he coordinates cross-border collaborative investigations and develops online training courses for environmental journalists worldwide. He holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Ecology from the University of Florida and was previously both a Visiting Predoctoral Scholar and Lab Coordinator at IU's CASEL. Based in New Mexico, Sam maintains research affiliations with Indiana University and the University of Florida, and has published widely on topics ranging from climate adaptation and food security to social network analysis in environmental governance. Check out Sam's recent publications here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sam-Schramski/research