Research Associates + Visiting Scholars

Matt Abel

Research Associate, CASEL

Email:

mattabel@iu.edu

Abel is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. His interests are at the intersection of political and environmental anthropology. His dissertation research focuses on the impacts of development policy on rural social organization in Brazil's Amazon estuary region and how small-scale farmers adapt social institutions to manage their relationship to new cycles of state developmentalism. His broader interests center on the ways local forms of social organization articulate with state and non-state institutions to both constrain and enable possibilities for collective action. Research interests: Rural development, political ecology, social movements, Brazil.

Murilo Alves Zacareli

Research Associate, CASEL

Email:

alveszacarel@wisc.edu

As part of his doctoral dissertation in Brazil, Alves Zacareli investigates the role of non-state actors (the private sector, non-governmental organizations, and local communities) in the implementation process of the Convention on Biological Diversity with a focus on the countries that are part of the Organización del Tratado de Cooperación Amazónica. As part of my research agenda in the U.S., I look at grassroots environmental movements opposing the extraction and the transporting of natural resources, namely metallic/non-metallic mining and oil pipelines, as well as social, cultural, and environmental impacts on local communities and indigenous peoples. Alves Zacareli is a Ph.D. candidate, international relations, University of São Paulo, Brazil, and a Ph.D. student, environment and resources, University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S. Degree Program: Ph.D. candidate, international relations, University of São Paulo, Brazil; Ph.D. candidate, environment and resources, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Research interests: Environmental politics, biodiversity regulation, non-state actors, social-ecological systems, and forest governance with a focus on the social and economic dimensions of sustainable development; grassroots environmental movements, indigenous peoples, natural resource extraction, and related impacts. Geographical areas of specialization: Amazon rainforest in South America; upper midwest in United States.

Angela Babb

Email:

ababb@indiana.edu

Degree program: Ph.D., Geography. Research interests: Food justice, political economy of agriculture, political ecology of the body, U.S. Farm Bill, nutrition assistance programs, Thrifty Food Plan.

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.

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.

Maria Clara da Silva-Forsberg

Visiting Scholar

Email:

cforsberg@uea.edu.br

da Silva-Forsberg is a professor at Amazonas State University in Brazil. She holds a Ph.D. degree from the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Master’s degree in ecology from the National Institute of Amazonia Research in Brazil, and a bachelor’s degree in biology from Federal University of Santa Catarina. She is also an associate professor of Science Education Ph.D. Program. Research interests: Her research focuses on the human dimensions of biodiversity conservation in the Amazon, environmental services, teacher training, and environmental education.

Fábio de Castro

Email:

fdecastr@indiana.edu

de Castro is an assistant professor in Brazilian studies and human ecology, Center for Latin American Research and Documentation, Amsterdam. His research focuses on governance of natural resources in Latin America and the dilemma between conservation and development goals at multiple scales. Research interests: Co-management models, ecoutourism, biofuel, protected areas, agroforestry, and solidarity economy.

Ana de Lima

Research Associate, CASEL

Ana C. B. de Lima received a Ph.D. in anthropology from Indiana University in 2017 with a minor in food studies and in social science research methods. Her Ph.D. project investigated the impact of the Brazilian government’s family cash transfer program, the Bolsa Família, on the diets and nutrition of mothers and adolescents residing in the rural Middle Solimões region. de Lima is an IU CASEL research affiliate and a postdoctoral researcher at the Federal University of Pará in Brazil. Research interests: Food security and climate vulnerability in small and medium towns of the Amazon Delta in conjunction with the Climate Resilient Cities Initiative in Latin America.

Evan Dennis

Research Associate, CASEL

Email:

emdennis@indiana.edu

Dennis earned his Ph.D. in anthropology from Indiana University. He studies the effects of problem framing on networks of formal and informal multi-level governance arrangements that develop to manage common-pool resources. His research topics include San Diego water management, California groundwater management, New York City flood management, and New York City Community Boards. Current interests: State-reinforced self-governance, networks of adjacent action situations, the political ecology of water, urban commons.

Monique Bruna Silva do Carmo

Research Affiliate, CASEL

Email:

moniquebruna@ymail.com

do Carmo earned her Ph.D. in urban planning and regional at Universidade do Vale do Paraiba-São José dos Campos. Research interests: Her research focus is in typologies of small cities in the Amazon region, urban growth, urban land use/landcover analysis, urban policies, and environmental degradation in urban areas. Geographical areas of specialization: Delta of the Amazon River.

Laura Meneghel dos Santos

Visiting Scholar, School of Public and Environmental Affairs

Email:

msantos.laura@gmail.com

dos Santos is a Ph.D. candidate in public policies, strategies and development at the Economics Institute of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economic science from the State University of Campinas (2012) and has experience in multidisciplinary research in the areas of economics, law, public policy, and environment. Her dissertation research uses the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework in the study of Legal Reserve Area compliance in Brazil. Research interests: Environmental public policies, environmental law, institutional economics, common-pool resource governance.

Edgar Espinoza

Research Associate, CASEL

Email:

edgaespi@indiana.edu

Espinoza is a former CASEL student member who earned his Ph.D. in geography at Indiana University. He is currently an assistant professor in the School of Geography at the University of Costa Rica. His dissertation research explored questions about the relationship between thinking and action in land use decision-making and how that affects fluvial systems. More specifically, it examined the relationships among beliefs, perceptions, social values, sociodemographic characteristics, and structural factors with the adoption of pro-environmental land management practices in a watershed system in Costa Rica. Research interests: Cognitive and valuative dimensions in human-environment interactions, political ecologies of fluvial systems, land use and land cover change, sociocultural dimensions of ecosystem services.

Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares

Visiting Scholar, CASEL

Email:

alfern@iu.edu

Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS) of the University of Helsinki (Finland). Most of his research deals with the relations between biological and cultural diversity, and the role that indigenous peoples and local communities play in biodiversity conservation. He has conducted more than 27 months of ethnographic fieldwork amongst indigenous peoples and local communities across much of the global south, working in countries such as Bolivia, Costa Rica, Kenya, and Madagascar. He did his Ph.D. dissertation among the Tsimané hunter-gatherers of the Bolivian Amazon, examining local observations of environmental change. As a visiting scholar at CASEL, he will work on a research project examining the role of indigenous lands in buffering against biodiversity loss across the Amazon Basin. Research interests: biocultural diversity, climate change, community-based conservation, ethnoecology, indigenous and local knowledge. Geographic areas of specialization: Bolivian Amazon, Madagascar, Kenya.

Stefano Fiorini

Email:

sfiorini@indiana.edu

Fiorini is an adjunct assistant professor in the IU Department of Anthropology. His main research focus is on collaborative and participatory approaches to the management of natural resources. In this context, he particularly looks at the impact policies and initiatives of cultural, environmental preservation, and sustainable development have in shaping peoples’ relationship with local places and the natural environment. Research interests: Collaborative management of natural resources and communities' participation in projects for local sustainable development.

Célia Futemma

Email:

cfutemma@unicamp.br

Futemma is a research scientist and professor at the Center for Environmental Studies and Research, State University of Campinas (UNICAMP). She served as coordinator of the Graduate Program on Environment and Society/UNICAMP (2016-2018). Research interests: Human ecology/environmental anthropology, smallholders and agriculture/agroforestry, commons heritage and communities, and people and parks. Geographical areas of specialization: Brazil.

Taís González

Research Associate, CASEL

At the Stockholm Resilience Centre (Stockholm University), González plans to focus on the understanding of social dynamics and relationships that shape the primary use of natural resources (or the abandonment of primary practices). She is considering the power structures/relations cross-scales and how they can influence people's decisions of the management of natural and cultural resources. She is also interested in the woman's perspective on these issues. Finally, she is interested in sustainability science and the co-production of knowledge through qualitative, transdisciplinary, and decolonizing research practices. Research interests: Local, traditional and indigenous knowledge in management practices; biodiversity and biocultural diversity conservation; social-ecological systems; transformation; gender; epistemologies of the south; participatory action research.

Yuri Kim

Visiting Scholar, CASEL

Email:

yurikim@iu.edu

Research interests: Watershed hydrology and hydrologic modeling. Climate change analysis. Landuse/landcover change modeling. Water resources forecast under climate and landuse/landcover change. Geographic information system and remote sensing. Geographical areas of specialization: Southeast U.S.

Gabriel Lui

Email:

glui@iu.edu

Gabriel Lui is an environmental analyst from the Ministry of the Environment, Brazil, where he worked as Director of Sustainable Rural Development and Manager of National Plans to Control Deforestation. He was visiting scholar at the Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change at Indiana University and the Sustainability Research Institute at University of Leeds, U.K. He received his Ph.D. in applied ecology from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Research interests: Environmental public policies, social benefits and conditional cash transfer programs, land use and land cover change, and rural development.

Harini Nagendra

Research Associate

Email:

harini.nagendra@apu.edu.in

Nagendra is a Professor in Sustainability at Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India. She has conducted research for over 25 years on India’s forests and cities, examining issues at the intersection of ecology and social justice. In addition to scientific publications, she is a well-known public speaker and writer on sustainability. Her books include Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Cities and Canopies: The Tree Book of Indian Cities (Penguin, 2019). Research interests: Remote sensing, landscape ecology, urban ecology, collective action, climate change.

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.

Kimberly G. Rogers

Research Associate, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder

Email:

kimbroge@indiana.edu

Rogers uses technical and theoretical tools to (1) disentangle the coupled upstream-downstream interactions between physical dynamics and institutional choice that converge in river deltas and other coastal environments and (2) examine the collective societal response to these interactions and their unintended feedbacks at both the local and regional scale. Recently, her work has focused on built infrastructure as a lens through which smallholder communities perceive, and actively respond to, environmental change. Her approach integrates quantitative and qualitative methods: direct field measurement of sediment transport phenomena, numerical and agent-based models, archival and institutional analyses, stakeholder input, and ethnographic survey techniques. Combining methods allows a better understanding of the complexity arising from multi- and cross-scale physical processes and the governance of sediment and water by communities living on dynamic landscapes. Research interests: Complex delta socioecological systems, multi-scale institutional analysis, environmental governance, sociotechnical systems, coastal and fluvial sediment dynamics.

Gabriela Russo Lopes

Research Associate, CASEL

Email:

g.russolopes@uva.nl

Russo Lopes is a Ph.D. candidate at University of Amsterdam, Center for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA). She has held positions at the Brazilian Mission to the UN, the Worldwatch Institute, at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) and is currently a PhD Candidate within the AGENTS (Amazonian Governance to Enable Transformations to Sustainability) Project. Her present research is about the politics of scale in Amazonian forest governance and the mechanisms that lead to the concentration or distribution of natural resources in the biome. Research interests: Environmental governance, land-use dynamics, socio-ecological resilience, forest-water nexus, sustainability in supply-chains, Amazon, Cerrado.

Carl Salk

Research Associate, CASEL

Salk finds every facet of forests interesting, in particular how people manage them, how they are changing due to direct and indirect human impacts, and the trees themselves. He studies forests with a variety of social science and ecological approaches, including climate change experiments, analysis of long-term datasets, and experimental games. Background: Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Research interests: Forest ecology, forest management, geospatial analysis of forests, biodiversity, global change impacts on trees, environmental incentives.

Gabriela Santa Rosa Macedo

Visiting Scholar, CASEL

Gabriela is a Ph.D. candidate at the Center for Environmental Studies and Research, State University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Research interests: Food systems, agroecology, smallholders and agriculture/agroforestry, land use analysis, public policies, governance. Geographical areas of specialization: Brazil.

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

Research Associate

Email:

sschramski@internews.org

Sam Schramski is an Editor for Special Projects at the Earth Journalism Network (EJN), as well as a freelance journalist and researcher. Prior to EJN, Sam was adjunct faculty at Western New Mexico University (Natural Sciences). In addition to his time in journalism and academia, he was briefly executive director of a food security and sustainability organization in rural New Mexico. He received his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Ecology and M.A. in Geography from the University of Florida and B.A. in American Studies from UC Berkeley. He was a postdoctoral researcher at both the Federal University of Amazonas (Brazil) and the University of Colorado.  Research areas: Climate change adaptation; natural resource use in Amazonia and sub-Saharan Africa; climate change perceptions in the Global South; environmental journalism.

Amanda Silvino

Visiting Scholar, CASEL

Degree program: Ph.D., University of Campinas, Brazil. Research interests: Ecology, nature conservancy, environmental sociology, political arenas, climate change. Geographical areas of specialization: Caatinga Biome and semiarid region of Brazil.

Andrea Siqueira

Email:

asigueir@indiana.edu

Siqueira is an adjunct professor in the IU Department of Anthropology. Research interests: Household economy, nutrition and health, gender environmental anthropology, community management and conservation of natural resources, people and parks, Latin America, Amazonia.

Maria Angélica Toniolo

Email:

atoniolo@indiana.edu

Toniolo is a professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Vale do Paraíba University, SP–Brazil. Her research focuses on the socioeconomic and environmental interactions between urban and rural places, including how institutional arrangements governing them enhance or undermine sustainability and well-being goals. Research interests: Urban and regional environmental planning, sustainable development, ecosystem goods and services, institutional arrangements (formal and informal) governing sustainable resource uses, collective action, environmental policy and justice.

Daiana Tourne

Research Associate, CASEL

Tourne has a Ph.D. in science. Her studies are concentrated on applied ecology, focusing on understanding the Amazon trees, their behavior, their interaction with the landscape and humans, generating knowledge, and looking for sustainable solutions. Human ecology lab, UNICAMP-SP. Tourne is a postdoctoral fellow at State University of Campinas at the Center for Environmental Studies and Research, São Paulo, Brazil. She is a member of the Amazonian Governance to Enable Transformations to Sustainability (AGENTS) project. Research interests: Landscape ecology, species distribution modeling, Amazon biodiversity, geospatial analysis, environmental perception, governance.

Nathan David Vogt

Research Associate, CASEL

Email:

navogt@indiana.edu

Vogt is an URP at University of the Paraíba Valley. His research interests are interdisciplinary and include how local populations adapt their resource use and management strategies in response to global changes and how these are expressed on their landscapes and well-being and integrating new spatial and social sciences tools and methodologies for analysis of these interactions at multiple scales. Research interests: land-use and landscape history, institutions (formal and informal) and collective action for governing ecosystems and their services, local ecological knowledge, social-ecological systems analysis, and sustainability science.

Landon Yoder

Email:

yoderl@indiana.edu

Yoder's field research explores agricultural water management practices in the context of Everglades water quality restoration. Degree program: Ph.D (water resources), IU Department of Geography. Research interests: Human dimensions of global environmental change, agricultural decision making, instituional analysis, governance, and geographic information system.