Email: mandrach@uoguelph.ca
Twitter: @markandrachuk
I work with communities on issues related to human dimensions of environmental change and natural resource conservation. My background and expertise are in social-ecological resilience and transformations, governance networks, knowledge systems, and climate adaptation. As of fall 2017, I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Guelph where I am contributing to development of a community-based system for tracking environmental change in order to support wildlife stewardship and conservation. This monitoring system is centered on app-based data collection (e.g. using smart phones and tablets) in order to engage and empower Inuit sovereignty over adaptive responses to environmental change. For my doctoral studies with the ECGG, I investigated how fishing communities can create or become more engaged in programs to improve livelihoods and ecological sustainability. This work, based in Vietnam, explored questions about fishers’ perceptions of environmental change, how to further engage fishers in co-management networks, and how successes with small-scale fisheries management can be replicated across communities. During my studies I also become interested in, and began to engage in, knowledge mobilization as a means to bridge scientific knowledge for application in policy and practice.