Faculty
Jacqueline Vadjunec
Professor
About
I am a human-environment geographer specializing in a wide variety of issues related to socio-ecological resilience and agricultural land-use land-cover change (LULCC) in the Americas. In general, my research agenda draws heavily on governance theory, cultural and political ecology (CAPE), land system science (LSS), and landscape architecture (LA).
My preferred research style is team-based, transdisciplinary and convergent in nature, and mixed methods in approach. I also strive to practice ethical community-based research, which includes community engaged, participatory, and/or citizen science approaches. My most recent research includes work on sustainability issues surrounding smallholder agriculturalists, nontimber forest producers, and new social movements in the Brazilian Amazon and Chiapas, Mexico.
In the United States, I am part of a long-term, multi-institutional project related to Dust Bowl survivors and socio-ecological resilience in the grasslands of the Southern Great Plains (SGP). Rather than having a set theoretical framework or a preferred set of methods for my research, I strive to do what I call “open-minded research,” where a transdisciplinary team (including community members) asks a compelling and important human-environment question(s) and then seeks the appropriate theoretical framing and methods to answer the question(s) which may or may not be within one’s own discipline. As such, I am always learning something exciting and new!