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About

Jasper Montana is a Research Fellow at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. His work focuses on understanding the goals, values and norms that underpin governance arrangements for biodiversity at and across different levels of decision making, with a particular interest in how they shape the relationship between knowledge and action.

His background is multidisciplinary, including undergraduate study in Zoology and Film Production, complemented with postgraduate study in Science and Society, and Human Geography. His work draws on a range of social and political theory ,and applies qualitative methods to empirically analyse the rules, discourses and practices that shape responses to sustainability issues. His work largely sits at the intersection of Architecture and Agency, and Democracy and Power, as research lenses of the 2018 Earth System Governance Science Plan to explore concerns about Diversity, Inequality, Transformations and the Anthropocene.

In addition to academic work, Jasper has five years’ experience working in natural history documentary production for the BBC and National Geographic, as director, cameraman and researcher across locations on land and underwater. He has also spent time as an intern at the United Nations Environment Programme in Germany, as a tour guide on the Great Barrier Reef, and as an animal keeper of birds, reptiles and insects.

His current project focuses on the interplay between sovereignty, responsibility and knowledge in the governance arrangements for biodiversity in the UK Overseas Territories. These fourteen islands, archipelagos and peninsulas stretch from the Antarctic to the tropics and harbour over 90% of the UK’s unique flora and fauna. The project is funded by an Early Career Fellowship of the Leverhulme Trust.

 

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