Desirée is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Colorado State University (CSU), U.S. Her current research focuses on the discursive impacts of the Anthropocene narrative for global environmental governance, specifically through cases of UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) and its global Biosphere Reserves. Her research explores tensions between concepts of conservation and sustainable development in light of rapid environmental change in an epoch defined by “humans as a geological force.”
Desirée’s past work includes extensive engagement with deliberative democracy in the context of environmental problems. She has worked on both local and global experiments in deliberative democracy and has conducted related research on transnational networks using deliberative democratic practices as a mechanism to influence international environmental negotiations. Desirée’s graduate career includes roles as a Sustainable Leadership Fellow with the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at CSU (2018-2019), project coordinator on a Global Challenges Research Team for the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at CSU (2015-2016), site host manager for World Wide Views on Climate and Energy (2015), and research assistant for World Wide Views on Biodiversity (2012).