About

CURRICULUM VITAE, Sept 2020

SOCIAL SCIENCE FOR SUSTAINABLE OCEANS

I am a common-pool resource scholar using mixed social science methods (ethnography, surveys, and economic experiments) to study collective action for sustainability in small-scale fisheries. My work broadly examines how decentralization policies create new opportunities for small-scale fishers to organize, cooperate, and improve their wellbeing under ineffectual governments.

ACADEMIC AFFILIATIONS

I am currently an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow under the Directorate of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences. My project empirically tests whether bottom-up and community-based governance leads to different patterns of compliance than top-down and state-led governance regimes in small-scale fisheries. I am conducting this project at the Marine Science Institute at University of California Santa Barbara under the mentorship of Dr. Steve Gaines, head of UCSB’s Sustainable Fisheries Group and Dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management.

In May 2020 I finished my PhD in the Coasts and Commons Co-Laboratory at Duke University Marine Lab, advised by Dr. Xavier Basurto, a student of Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom.