Research and teaching emphases are on the politics of international development and environmental conservation, with a focus on institutional change, property rights, poverty, and biodiversity. Written extensively on 1) indigenous knowledge, 2) community-based conservation, 3) common property, 4) population and resources, and 5) environmental identities. Recent interests include the decentralization of environmental policy (especially forestry and wildlife), and the emergence of environment as a subject of human concern.

Instrumental in establishing the School's Environmental Justice Program that focuses on the differential impact of environmental contaminants on people of color and low-income communities; Founder and Director of the Environmental Justice Initiative for research and retrieval/dissemination conferences and policy briefings. Research and conferences include both a domestic and international foci, particularly on climate justice. Teaching portfolio includes: Introduction to Environmental Justice (Environ. 222), Conception, Practical Issues and Dilemmas in Environmental Justice (SNRE 582), and the Masters Project/NRE 701.

Beth Diamond is a landscape theorist, designer and cultural instigator who believes in landscape architecture as an art form and a visionary medium for social change and evolution. Her interests stem from a fascination with the qualities and expressions of the built world as a mirror of human civilization and her work in landscape architecture focuses on strategies to transform societies in sustainable and culturally affirming ways.

Research and teaching in conservation biology and the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases. Major research projects focus on the impact of diseases on wildlife populations and the environmental causes leading to disease emergence. Other projects examine how habitat fragmentation and global climate change result in species extinction.

Professor Hardin holds a joint position with the Department of Anthropology. Her areas of interest and scientific study include human/wildlife interactions, and social and environmental change related to tourism, logging, conservation and hunting in the forests of Central African Republic. Recent projects focus on the increasingly intertwined practices of health and environmental management in equatorial and southern Africa. She also studies historical and ethnographic aspects of concessionary politics involving corporations, NGOs, and local communities, particularly in Africa.

Research Interests:

My broad research interests are related to the human dimensions of global change and social studies of science. I am particularly interested in understanding: (a) the use of technoscientific information, especially seasonal climate (El Nino forecasting) in building adaptive capacity to climate variability and change (drought planning, water management, and agriculture) in the U.S. and Latin America (Brazil, Mexico and Chile); (b) the impact of technocratic decisionmaking on issues of democracy and equity; (c) the co-production of science and policy and the role of technocrats as decisionmakers; (d) the role of popular participation in urban environmental policymaking and policymaker/client interactions; (e)U.S.-Mexico border region environmental policymaking especially regarding transboundary water conflict, environmental health, a common use of shared natural resources.

Teaching and research interests are focused on environmental justice, public opinion and the environment, and influences on environmental policy making. A founder of the Environmental Justice Program at the University of Michigan. Current research includes understanding the causes of disproportionate environmental burdens in people of color communities and the role that environmental factors play in accounting for racial and socioeconomic disparities in health.

Joan Iverson Nassauer is Professor of Landscape Architecture in the School of Natural Resources and Environment. She was named Fellow by the American Society of Landscape Architects (1992), Fellow of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (2007), and Distinguished Practitioner of Landscape Ecology in the US (1998) and Distinguished Scholar (2007) by the International Association of Landscape Ecology. Teaching focuses on landscape ecology and landscape perception with applications in design and planning of metropolitan and agricultural watersheds. She has recently served as Visiting Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects (2006), Farrand Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California-Berkeley (2003, and Miegunyah Fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia (2001).

My areas of teaching include Field Ecology, a graduate seminar in conservation biology (Conservation in Fragmented Landscapes), and an undergraduate course on sustainable development and globalization (Our Common Future). My research focuses on trophic interactions in tropical agroecosystems and ecological succession in tropical regions.

My current research examines the function of biological diversity in the coffee agroecosystem in Southern Mexico.

Research focus

Issues of social and ecological sustainability with a primary focus on the drivers of overconsumption and the conditions for restrained resource use.  

Courses taught

Graduate

Principles for Sustainability: From the Local to the Global

Food and Water: Research Questions at the Base of the Economy

Localization: Adaptations for the 80% Downshift

Undergraduate

Global Water

Research interests include social movements; environmental justice; leisure and natural resource use; poverty and urban issues; and race, gender and ethnic relations. Recent researh activities have included a study of racial differences in students' attitudes and perception of the environment, as well as an examination of minority environmental activism in the U.S.