Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
Showing 1-20 of 66 Results
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Nicole Ardoin
Associate Professor of Environmental Social Sciences and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsNicole Ardoin, the Emmett Family Faculty Scholar, is an associate professor of Environmental Behavioral Sciences in the Environmental Social Sciences Department of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability (SDSS).
Professor Ardoin studies motivations for and barriers to environmental behavior among a range of audiences and in varying settings; the use of social strategies by NGOs to engage individuals and communities in decisionmaking related to the environment; and the role of place-based connections and environmental learning on engagement in place-protective and stewardship actions over time.
Professor Ardoin's Social Ecology Lab group uses mixed-methods approaches--including participant observation, interviews, surveys, mapping, network analysis, and ethnography, among others--to pursue their interdisciplinary scholarship with community collaborators through a field-based, participatory frame. Professor Ardoin is an associate editor of the journal Environmental Education Research, a trustee of the California Academy of Sciences, and chair of NatureBridge's Education Advisory Council, among other areas of service to the environment and conservation field.
RECENT RESEARCH (Selected):
Accelerating 30x30 Through a Collaborative Regional Prioritization Partnership
With support from the SDSS Accelerator
PI: Liz Hadly; co-PIs Nicole Ardoin, Debbie Sivas
Empowering Youth in Frontline Communities through Climate Data
PI: Victor Lee; co-PIs Nicole Ardoin, Jenny Suckale
A Social Science/Sustainability Incubator: Interdisciplinary scholarship and practice to amplify impact and redefine solutions
With support from Stanford’s Sustainability Initiative
PI: Nicole Ardoin; co-PI: James H. Jones
Tracking Socio-Ecological Recovery after Forest Fire: The Case of Big Basin
With support from: Digital Learning Initiative of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning
The Summen Project: Coastal Fog-mediated Interactions Between Climate Change, Upwelling, and Coast Redwood Resilience
With support from NSF Coastal SEES Program, the National Geographic Society, and the TELOS Fund
In partnership with UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, Carnegie, Oregon State University
Scholars and Land-Trust Managers Collaborating for Solutions
With support from Realizing Environmental Innovations Projects (REIP), Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
PI: Nicole Ardoin; co-PI: Deborah Gordon
Community and Collective Environmental Literacy as a Motivator for Participating in Environmental Stewardship
With support from the Pisces Foundation
Hybrid Physical and Digital Spaces for Enhanced Sustainability and Wellbeing
WIth support from Stanford Catalyst for Collaborative Solutions
PI: Sarah Billington, Civil and Environmental Engineering; co-PIs Nicole Ardoin, James Landay, Hazel Markus
Blue Habits: Leveraging Behavioral Science to Support Pro-Ocean Behaviors
With support from The Oceanic Society
eeWorks: Examining the body of evidence for environmental education with regard to conservation, academic outcomes, civic engagement, and positive youth development
With support from the North American Association for Environmental Education, US EPA, Fish and Wildlife Service, and others -
William Barnett
Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Business Leadership, Professor of Environmental Social Sciences and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsBarnett studies how organizations are responding to the challenge of environmental sustainability. He is now establishing research sites around the world, investigating a number of areas where organizational adaptation is key, including: the proliferation of climate tech start ups, issues around environmental justice, the challenge of climate migration, and the urgent need to preserve the world's rainforests.
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Hélène Benveniste
Assistant Professor of Environmental Social Sciences
BioHélène Benveniste is an Assistant Professor in the Global Environmental Policy unit of the Department of Environmental Social Sciences at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. She works on international environmental policy and politics, with focuses on climate-related human migration and global governance of environmental issues. In her research, she uses both quantitative and qualitative methods drawn from political and other social sciences. Her work has appeared in scientific journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Nature Climate Change. Prior to joining Stanford, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University. She holds a Ph.D. in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.
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Adrien Gabriel Bilal
Assistant Professor of Economics, Center Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and Assistant Professor, by courtesy, of Environmental Social Sciences
BioAdrien Bilal is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He is a macroeconomist who works on topics related to climate change, spatial and labor economics.
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Alison W. Bowers
Research Associate, Environmental Social Sciences
BioAlison Bowers holds a PhD in Educational Research and Evaluation from Virginia Tech. Her background and experience include working as a field-based environmental educator with the Cooperative Extension Service and at the national scale with nonprofit conservation and education organizations. Alison has an EdS in Early Childhood Special Education from George Washington University, a MFRC with a Certificate in Environmental Education and Communication from the University of Florida, and a BA in Psychology from the University of South Carolina. Her research focus is on research design and process and she is particularly interested in research reviews, systematic reviews, and grounded theory methodology.
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Marshall Burke
Professor of Environmental Social Sciences, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, at the Woods Institute for the Environment, at SIEPR and Professor, by courtesy, of Earth System Science
BioMarshall Burke is professor of Global Environmental Policy in the Doerr School of Sustainability at Stanford, a senior fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, all at Stanford. He is also a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research uses tools from the social and natural sciences to measure environmental change, how society is impacted by this change, and how it can respond. He holds a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from UC Berkeley, and a BA in International Relations from Stanford. He directs the Environmental Change and Human Outcomes Lab at Stanford, is co-founder of AtlasAI, and co-creator of the Environmental Hazards Adaptation Atlas.
Prospective students should see my personal and lab webpages, linked at right. -
Maxine Burkett
Emerson Collective Professor of Climate, Environment, and Society
BioMaxine Burkett is the Emerson Collective Professor of Climate, Environment, and Society at Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability and the Faculty Director of the Stanford Center for Just Environmental Futures. Burkett’s research examines the relationship between environmental change and inequity and its impact on frontline communities, both domestic and international. With a background in law and diplomacy, her areas of expertise include climate change (international, national, subnational law and policy), ocean and coastal law, climate-related migration, and climate change and human security.
Professor Burkett most recently served as a Professor Law at the William S. Richardson School of Law as well as in senior roles at the White House and the State Department. At the State Department she oversaw the formulation and implementation of U.S. policy on a broad range of international issues concerning the oceans, the Arctic, the Antarctic, and marine conservation in her role as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans, Fisheries, and Polar Affairs. She also served as a Senior Advisor to Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, where her portfolio included climate-related migration, climate security, bilateral relationships with island nations, and Indigenous Peoples’ engagement. From 2021-2023, Burkett was also a Visiting Professor at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, where she advanced research on climate justice and public health. -
Jen Burney
Professor of Environmental Social Sciences, of Earth System Science and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
BioJennifer (Jen) Burney is a Professor in Global Environmental Policy and Earth System Science in the Doerr School of Sustainability. Her research focuses on the coupled relationships between climate and food security – measuring air pollutant emissions and concentrations, quantifying the effects of climate and air pollution on land use and food systems, understanding how food production and consumption contribute to climate change, and designing and evaluating technologies and strategies for adaptation and mitigation among the world’s farmers. Her research group combines methods from physics, ecology, statistics, remote sensing, economics, and policy to understand critical scientific uncertainties in this coupled system and to provide evidence for what will – or won’t – work to simultaneously end hunger and stabilize earth’s climate. She earned a PhD in physics in 2007, completed postdoctoral fellowships in both food security and climate science, and was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2011; prior to joining the Doerr School, she served on the faculty at UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
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Bruce Cain
Charles Louis Ducommun Professor in the School of Humanities & Sciences, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, at SIEPR, at the Precourt Institute for Energy & Professor of Environmental Social Sciences
BioBruce E. Cain is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. He received a BA from Bowdoin College (1970), a B Phil. from Oxford University (1972) as a Rhodes Scholar, and a Ph D from Harvard University (1976). He taught at Caltech (1976-89) and UC Berkeley (1989-2012) before coming to Stanford. Professor Cain was Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley from 1990-2007 and Executive Director of the UC Washington Center from 2005-2012. He was elected the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000 and has won awards for his research (Richard F. Fenno Prize, 1988), teaching (Caltech 1988 and UC Berkeley 2003) and public service (Zale Award for Outstanding Achievement in Policy Research and Public Service, 2000). His areas of expertise include political regulation, applied democratic theory, representation and state politics. Some of Professor Cain’s most recent publications include “Malleable Constitutions: Reflections on State Constitutional Design,” coauthored with Roger Noll in University of Texas Law Review, volume 2, 2009; “More or Less: Searching for Regulatory Balance,” in Race, Reform and the Political Process, edited by Heather Gerken, Guy Charles and Michael Kang, CUP, 2011; “Redistricting Commissions: A Better Political Buffer?” in The Yale Law Journal, volume 121, 2012; and Democracy More or Less (CUP, 2015). He is currently working on problems of environmental governance.
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Pedro Cintra
Ph.D. Student in Environmental Social Sciences, admitted Autumn 2025
BioTrained as a physicist until my MSc, in which I worked with neutrino detection of core collapse supernovae, I recently switched fields to apply mathematical and computational models to ecological and social systems :)
On the ecological side, I like working with individual based models for cooperation and foraging strategies from an evolutionary perspective. On the social side, I am currently interested in the evolution of cultural values on groups of humans and polarization of opinions on networks of contacts. -
Sara Constantino
Assistant Professor of Environmental Social Sciences and Center Fellow, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Stanford Graduate School of Business
BioSara Constantino is an assistant professor at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability in the Department of Environmental Social Sciences and a visiting research scholar at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. She is also a faculty affiliate at SPARQ and the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute. She has an interdisciplinary background at the intersection of economics, psychology, and environmental policy and politics. Her research focuses on understanding the interplay between individual, collective, institutional and ecological factors, including how they shape preferences, decisions, experiences and resilience to extreme events or shocks. In recent and ongoing studies, she is looking at the role of polarization, social norms and governance in stimulating or stifling climate action, including both adaptation and mitigation, and what conditions lead groups mobilize to shape policy and other outcomes. She also works on the impacts and politics of guaranteed income and other cash transfer programs. Prior to starting at Stanford, she was an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the Department of Psychology at Northeastern University and an associate research scholar at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. Before this, she was a senior research fellow in guaranteed income with the Jain Family Institute, a founding editor at Nature Human Behavior, and a research coordinator with the Institute for Fiscal Studies. She received her bachelor’s degree in economics from McGill University, a master’s degree in economics from University College London, a Ph.D. in cognitive and decision sciences from New York University, and did a postdoc focused on environmental policy, politics and decision-making at Princeton University.
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Larry Crowder
Edward Ricketts Provostial Professor, Professor of Oceans, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Professor, by courtesy, of Environmental Social Sciences
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEcology, conservation, fisheries, protected species, ecosystem-based management