Dan McCarthy

Dan McCarthy is the Director of the Waterloo Institute of Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR), and the  Associate Director, Undergraduate Studies, as well as an associate professor in the School of Environment, Resource and Sustainability  at the University of Waterloo.

His interdisciplinary academic background has focused on exploring the utility of complex systems-based approaches to understanding and intervening in linked social, ecological, epistemological systems.  He holds strong research interests and partnerships that relate to fostering adaptive capacity, social and environmental justice and social innovation in the field of environmental policy. McCarthy works closely with several First Nations groups in both northern and southern Ontario as well as conservation and environmental movement organizations in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario. 

Visit Dan McCarthy's website.

Graduate students doing WISIR-related work

Erin Alexiuk

Meaghan Eastwood & Ryan Ness

Selected publications

McCarthy DDP, Millen M, Boyden M, Alexiuk A, Whitelaw G, Viswanathan L, Westley F.  Under Review.  A First Nations-led Social Innovation: A Moose, a Gold Mining Company and a Policy Window. Ecology and Society.

Alexiuk E, McCarthy DDP, King C, Macbeth J, Whitelaw GS, Viswanathan L.  Under Review.  A Critical Indigenist Approach to Social Innovation: Building Municipal-Indigenous Relations in Southern Ontario, Canada. Ecology and Society.

McCarthy DDP, Crandall D*, Whitelaw GS, Westley F, Burnett, D. In Press. The Oak Ridges Moraine as a Social Innovation: Strategic Vision as a Social-Ecological Interaction. Ecology and Society.

McCarthy, DDP., Crandall, D, Whitelaw, G., General, Z, Tsuji, L. 2011. A Critical Systems Approach to Social Learning: Building Adaptive Capacity in Social, Ecological, Epistemological (SEE) Systems. Ecology and Society. Vol. 16 No. 3.