Audrey Irvine-Broque

Audrey Irvine-Broque (she/her) is a PhD student in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia, supervised by Dr. Jessica Dempsey. Her research focuses on the political economic forces that drive ecosystem loss, from provincial policies subsidizing defaunation to international patterns of debt and austerity and their implications for biodiversity decline. She also studies financial sector approaches to managing ecological problems through the use of financial risk frameworks and markets.

Dennis Engist

I’m a PhD student in Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems at UBC. Before joining WCEL in 2021, I completed a BSc and MSc in Agricultural Science at ETH Zürich, where I also worked as a pre-doc at the Agricultural Economics and Policy Group (AECP) for a year. My field of research is environmental economics, with a focus on the impact of agriculture and economic activity on biodiversity. I am currently investigating the biodiversity impact of the adoption of genetically modified crops in the United States, and I looked at the impact of European agricultural systems on bird populations in a previous project.

Gracie Crafts

Gracie Crafts (she/her) (Niizhogiiziskwe - Two Suns Woman) is of the Marten clan from Wasauksing First Nation. She is Two-Spirit Anishinaabe and non – Indigenous (mixed European and Jewish) woman. She grew up in Parry Sound, Ontario. She went to Trent University and completed a BSc in Indigenous Environmental Science. She is a Master of Science in Forestry student working with Dr. Danielle Ignace (Ignace Lab) and Dr. Lori Daniels at the University of British Columbia.

Gracie's research will take place within the traditional territory of the Sylix peoples at Vaseux Lake in the Southern interior of British Columbia. Her research is focused on the use of Indigenous fire stewardship and cultural fire to revitalize culturally- significant plants, food and medicines and increase biodiversity through positive interactions with fire.

Pablo Gonzalez Moctezuma

Originally from Oaxaca City, Mexico, son of a couple of social workers, I am passionate about fishing, soccer and solving riddles. As a PhD candidate at UBC Landscapes and Livelihoods, I explore the ways in which landscapes managed mostly by smallholder farmers change and evolve. My current degree centers on: quantifying the population and spatial distribution of smallholder farmers in Mexico (1991 to 2023), monitoring large scale restoration initiatives and testing remote sensing techniques that could improve our understanding of the relationship between small farms and changes in land use and landscape configuration.

I hold a Masters in Rural Development Management from the Universidad Autonoma Chapingo with a specialization in Family Agriculture and Food Security and BS. in Mathematics from UNAM.

Rapichan Phurisamban

Rapichan (Ta) Phurisamban is a PhD candidate in Terre Satterfield’s lab at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability. She is an interdisciplinary river scholar who works toward overcoming challenges in modern freshwater and biocultural diversity governance. Her current research brings critical ethnographic scholarship to study lived realities, customary knowledge, and Mekong River science-policy-management interfaces. She also works with riparian community members on a Mekong River and Fish Monitoring Project that underscores locally representative ways of knowing and living with the river. Through her involvement in environmental justice and journey into veganism, she recognizes the responsibility to foreground in her research the voices, expertise, and experiences of humans and nonhumans who have been marginalized and dismissed.

Vanessa Jones

My name is Vanessa Jones, and I am a PhD student in the Indigenous Ecology Lab in the Faculty of Forestry, supervised by Dr. Jennifer Grenz. I completed my MSc in Plant Science at UBC this past December. During my MSc, I studied the relationship between knotweed plants, their management with herbicides, and the soil microbial community. My PhD project aims to characterize the soil microbial community of Indigenous forest gardens, which are resilient, previously human-shaped ecosystems that have been left untended since colonization, but remain as residual gardens. As Indigenous communities work to reclaim the prominence of forest gardens in their food systems, interest is growing to better understand how their management builds benefits including food security, soil health, and biodiversity.