18 August 2009
Moving on: ECI and SOGE bid farewell to Emily Boyd, Max Boykoff and Luiz Aragao
Emily Boyd and Max Boykoff were among the first group of Oxford Martin School fellows recruited in 2006 to the Environmental Change Institute. During the three years they spent in Oxford they made important contributions to the research, teaching and outreach activities of both the ECI and the School of Geography and Environment as well as to the overall development of the Oxford Martin School. They are now moving on to academic posts – Emily is joining the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds as a lecturer in Environment and Development and Max is moving to the University of Colorado as a member of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research and as a assistant professor in Environmental Studies.
Max came to Oxford after finishing his PhD at UC Santa Cruz with a growing reputation for his research on the media and climate change and during his time with us developed broader interests in the cultural politics of climate change and the development and discourses of the new carbon economy. During his time at Oxford he published 10 lead author articles in environmental and geography journals and two edited books (The Politics of Climate Change and, with Mike Goodman, Contentious Geographies: Environmental Knowledge, Meaning, Scale). He also contributed chapters to several books and contributed to ECI reports including the First Step report on the carbon emissions of the UK Music Industry and to the 2007 UNDP Human Development Report. He is completing a monograph for Cambridge University Press titled: Who Speaks for Climate? Making Sense of Mass Media Reporting on Climate Change. Max was a popular teacher and dissertation supervisor responsible for MSc seminars on Media and Environment and Global Environmental Politics as well as the new FHS course for undergraduates on Environmental Policy. He organized several successful 21st Century School workshops including one on the ethics of carbon markets (with philosophers associated with Programme on Ethics of the New Biosciences) and helped to sustain ECI links with the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society (formerly the James Martin Institute) and the Smith School.
Emily Boyd came to Oxford following her PhD in the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, and postdocs at the Tyndall Centre and Stockholm Resilience Centre. Emily specializes in climate and development, especially carbon markets, adaptation and resilience. Emily won a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship while at ECI to address challenges for development theory and practice under climate change, governance of carbon markets for development and politics of adaptation, with a geographical focus on India and China. Emily was a theme leader for adaptive governance for the Stockholm Resilience Centre throughout her time at ECI. At Oxford Emily published over a dozen articles (lead author on 10 articles) in geography, environment and development journals, and has contributed several book chapters, reports and popular articles. She is lead author on two forthcoming books (Governing Social-Ecological Transformations: Adapting to the Challenge of Global Environmental Change. Cambridge University Press with Professor Carl Folke, and A Beginners Guide to Climate Change with Emma Tompkins). She is guest editor for three forthcoming special journal issues and a book, which include ‘Climate Change and Development Futures’ for the Development Policy Review, ‘The ethics of commodifying carbon in the new carbon economy’ for The Geographical Journal (with Mike Goodman) and on ‘The ‘New’ Carbon Economy’ for Antipode and Wiley book (with Peter Newell and Max Boykoff). Emily co-designed and taught popular MSc option seminars on Ecosystem Markets and Development as well as giving guest lectures in several core courses. She has supervised 12 MSc dissertations, one SoGE PhD student, and examined two PhD students. Emily organised five successful workshops during her time at Oxford including ‘Living with Climate Change’, ‘Resilience, Realities and Research in African Environments’, ‘The Ethics of Commodifying Carbon in the New Carbon Economy’, ‘Theorizing the New Carbon Economy’; and ESPA-DFID ‘Property Rights and Values’ workshop with the Global Canopy Programme and QEH. She was appointed Member of the Board for Latin America Research Programme, Research Council of Norway and became an Associate Faculty of the Smith School and the Oxford Tropical Centre for Forests.
This summer we are also saying a fond farewell to tropical forest researcher Dr Luiz Aragao who moved to ECI in 2005 with the advent of Professor Malhi’s Ecosystems Dynamics team from Edinburgh University. Luiz has moved to Exeter University to undertake a new position as departmental Lecturer in Tropical Forestry. During his time with ECI Luiz developed further his expertise in the field of remote sensing of tropical forest disturbances. In 2008 Luiz was granted a 3-year NERC Research Fellowship to study the carbon cycling of fire-affected forests in Amazonia, bridging remote sensing analysis and field-based surveys in Amazonia. Luiz gave many lectures and supervision to students within the School of Geography and the Environment at Oxford University and was a key source of expertise for many of the doctoral students within the Ecosystems Dynamics team. Among other speaking engagements he spoke at the 2006 Climate change and the Fate of the Amazon Conference and consequently co-authored papers in both Science and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. He published widely during his time at ECI with over 15 academic publications between 2005-2009.
Emily, Max and Luiz were all enthusiastic collaborators and colleagues and we will miss their cheerful presence in the halls of the OUCE. We wish them the very best in their new lives.