I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at Utrecht University’s Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development. My research focuses on issues of environmental justice and how relations of power influence outcomes in sustainability transitions. I am interested in a range of topics related to environmental governance, with a special focus on the role of non-state actors in governance decision-making and the implementation of nature-based solutions for climate action. My main body of work analyzes the influence of private philanthropic foundations in marine conservation governance, with a particular emphasis on the way foundations can and cannot improve justice outcomes through grant-making relations. I have also worked with multilateral organizations like the Global Environment Facility to develop just transition frameworks that are fit-for-purpose and address issues of inequality in large-scale funding initiatives.
Currently, my research looks at how to operationalize multispecies justice through nature-based solutions and critically interrogates how discourses of transformative change are being mobilized in global environmental politics. I am also working on developing an approach to environmental justice that centers the power of emotions in defining sustainability outcomes. To do this, I draw on the critical explanatory power of Lacanian psychoanalysis and its application of ideas like desire, fantasy, and enjoyment to help better explain how and why society remains passionately invested in certain forms of politics despite knowing they cause harm. Overall, the goal of my research is to challenge the naturalization of discourses that require injustice and environmental destruction to operate in order to improve justice outcomes for people and the planet.