Lab members
Suneel Kumar
Suneel Kumar is a Ph.D. student in Integrative Conservation (ICON) and Anthropology whose interests are rooted in the question, “What is Indus River?” Seeing the Indus River as having “agency,” he is interested in how its multiple properties or ontologies “allow” different stakeholders (state, civil society, environment and water experts, political parties, local fishermen and agriculturalists, conservation organizations) to construct diverse ontological realities of the Indus. He is interested in exploring the ontological roots of conflict among differentially positioned actors, and how state institutions impose one ontology of the Indus River while ignoring or denying the existence of other ontological realities when devising water governance policies. By conducting institutional ethnography within different “sites” of ontological engagement (e.g., dam construction, policies, rituals), he will explore the dynamic interactions and exchanges that occur at the interface of distinct ontologies. He is also interested in the use of experimental or action research methods to explore the possibility for ontological engagement among multiple stakeholders to provide a pathway for more far-reaching solutions to contemporary water governance challenges.
Sabikun Naher
Sabikun Naher is a PhD student in Anthropology whose research focuses on the historical and contemporary processes of marginalization faced by ethnic minorities, particularly in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh. She examines how colonial and post-colonial state-building practices have shaped ethnic identities, territories, and relationships between majority and minority groups. Sabikun emphasizes the lived experiences of women, highlighting how they navigate and resist socio-political and economic marginalization, including issues related to land control and the construction of identity. Additionally, she has published extensively on gender, identity, and minority rights in order to inform inclusive policies that promote social justice, self-determination, and improved relations between majority and minority communities in Bangladesh and beyond.
Asif Sandeelo
Asif Sandeelo is a Ph.D. student in Integrative Conservation (ICON) and Anthropology. His research explores the interface of conservation and politics through a case study of elite falconry in semi-desert areas of Sindh, Pakistan. He is particularly interested in how elite falconers with political influence and economic power challenge conservation laws and policies; co-constitute narratives of environmental organizations; and in so doing, shape conservation practices and sovereignty over law and territory. Drawing on the concept of “multi-species diplomacy,” his work also explores how the relations between humans and non-human species (falcons, and the Houbara bustards these falcons are used to hunt) influence international relations between Pakistan and Gulf States. Asif’s areas of interest include the politics of conservation, the politics of knowledge, multi-species ethnography, bird conservation, and customary land rights. With more than 9 years of experience at WWF-Pakistan, Asif worked in different conservation projects, where he developed his interest in the interconnections between politics and conservation. He also contributes articles for media outlets on environmental themes such biodiversity conservation, climate change, water governance and natural resource management.
Director
Laura German
The Institutions and Governance Lab is directed by Dr. Laura German, Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Integrative Conservation Research. While her scholarship has shifted from constructive (policy- and practice-oriented) to more critical orientations over time, she has an ongoing interest in engaged research in the service of social justice and environmental sustainability. One body of her recent work has focused on interrogating the truth claims of powerful actors. Her latest book, Power/Knowledge/Land: Contested Ontologies of Land and its Governance (University of Michigan Press, 2022), takes a critical look at the knowledge claims underlying the dominant "land governance" response to the 2007/08 outcry over global land grabbing. She does this through a look at the interests animating these discourses, the worlds they bring into being, and the world-making projects foreclosed in the process. Dr. German is also engaged in an ongoing partnership with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in support of their efforts to restore relations with homelands. This includes work to address the harmful social and ecological legacies of fire suppression and to create opportunities for Indigenous youth in land-based STEM fields.
Dr. German welcomes expressions of interest from students and collaborators wishing to push the boundaries of current thought and practice to foster more just and sustainable futures.
Lab Alumni
Anya Bonanno
Anya Bonanno’s interests meet at the nexus of institutions, agrobiodiversity, and livelihoods in West Africa. She plans to explore the institutional context of agrobiodiversity—governance, land tenure, labor, and market integration—and to what extent these structures shape rice diversity management in the northern province of Sierra Leone. While the social construction of crop diversity is recognized, its institutional dimensions remain under-explored. Additionally, Anya is interested in the nature and extent to which policy at the national and international scales enhance or constrain agrobiodiversity within these systems.
Katie Gibson
Katie Gibson is a Ph.D. student in Integrative Conservation (ICON) and Anthropology. She is broadly interested in institutional processes that marginalize or empower communities, drawing from the literature on environmental and social justice movements, land grabs and indigenous rights. Specifically, she is interested in how power is leveraged at varying scales within the climate policy arena to control resources in Latin America.
Danielle Jensen-Ryan
Danielle’s doctoral research focused on the science-policy interface and the formal and informal factors which influence the extent to and ways in which science is used to shape environmental policy decisions. To address this research topic, Danielle carried out her doctoral research in Georgia exploring how water policy decisions are made and the dynamics of the science-policy interface. Danielle went on to a post-doctoral position with the Bioenergy Alliance of the Northern Rockies (BANR) at the University of Wyoming, where she analyzed the sociocultural and ecological sustainability of beetle-killed and other forest biomass as a bioenergy feedstock for the renewable energy industry. She now works as a Research Scientist at the University of Wyoming.
Jessica Chappell
Jessica is a Ph.D. student in the Integrative Conservation program and Odum School of Ecology. Jessica’s research focuses on balancing social and ecological demands for freshwater, specifically in Puerto Rican streams. She is interested in how water management functions in Puerto Rico and is examining differences in de jure and de facto water governance on the island. Last summer, Jessica carried out key informant interviews with representatives of federal and state agencies involved with water management on the island to understand how accountability to environmental flows, water use efficiency, and hydrologic connectivity are framed and operationalized. Jessica hopes to use her findings to develop more realistic conservation recommendations for the maintenance of freshwater biodiversity.
Kristen Lear
Kristen is a Ph.D. student in Integrative Conservation and Forestry and Natural Resources with regular involvement in lab activities. Her research focuses on the conservation of endangered pollinating bats that migrate between the U.S. and Mexico. Specifically, she is working on the conservation of the Mexican long-nosed bat, a species that feeds on and pollinates agaves, which people use to produce tequila and mezcal. Her work seeks to understand how to develop effective conservation strategies that are tailored to the unique social, political, and economic contexts of each area through which the bats migrate. She will assess the potential for different governance paradigms (e.g. market-based instruments, self-organization, regulatory) to aid in the conservation of this migratory species, as well explore the critiques and potential pitfalls of each of these governance paradigms. More information about her current and previous research can be found at kristenlear.wixsite.com/batconservation.
Lindsey Popken
Lindsey Popken (she/her) was a PhD student in Integrative Conservation (ICON) and Anthropology. Broadly, she is interested in emerging spaces of Indigenous-led ecological governance and how they challenge Settler-State sovereignty and reaffirm Indigenous self-determination. Lindsey plans to co-develop and co-conduct research with Northern Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations on the West Coast of Vancouver Island in Canada, looking at how resurgent Nuu-chah-nulth-led sea otter harvesting envisions alternatives to current Canadian-led sea otter governance that are rooted in Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies, cosmologies, values, and histories. She is also interested in the ways in which sea otter harvesting is an enactment of Indigenous food sovereignty, and how the ontological assumptions that underly Indigenous and Canadian visions for ecological governance interact in conservation and governance practices.