Kate Sherren

Landscapes - People - Global change

New review paper by Robin on place and mobility

Very excited to announce the first paper out of Robin Willcocks-Musselman’s interdisciplinary PhD process, co-authored with her committee members Karen Foster, Julia Baird and Julia Woodhall-Melnik. This open access paper, Finding mobility in place attachment research: lessons for managed retreat, is in a special issue of the journal Frontiers in Climate that came out of the Columbia Managed Retreat conference back in 2023. In this thorough review tackled in her comprehensive exam, Robin goes deep on theories of place and what they have to say about mobility overall, and the specific implications for forced relocations such as during managed retreat for climate adaptation. The implications can be positive and negative, and her empirical work will seek to explore this in more detail in relation to managed retreat in the Atlantic region. Bravo, Robin!

This table from the paper synthesizes the positive and negative implications of place for managed retreat.

Ask Canada – a new RSC College Interdisciplinary Research Group

When nominated into the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, one is asked to say how they will contribute to the College. During my nomination I pitched an idea for a new Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) on quantitative social science research policy and data infrastructure (including survey and social media methods). With the support of a few fellow members (Mark Stoddart, Karen Foster and Elizabeth Dubois) that IRG has just been provisionally approved. Now we are looking for additional members, and writing a funding application to staff some empirical work to support it. Please get in touch with me if you are an RSC College member who is interested to hear more.  A brief description follows:

Ask Canada: Toward robust data infrastructure and policy settings for quantitative social science in Canada

The landscape of quantitative social science research methods in Canada is a chaotic mix of practices and proxies both poorly understood at a system level and poorly equipped to support replicable research. This includes inadequate social science data infrastructure, inattention to policy settings to support empirical methods, and typically (bar a few fee-for-service labs) small, atomized academic teams that experience significant transaction costs in using them. Declining survey response rates drive many to work with polling firms or online modes of distribution that may compromise data quality and generalizability of insight. The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science highlights the need to “[invest] in open science infrastructures and services”, but there is an ongoing tension globally—recognized by SDG 16 in relation to strong institutions—between high-quality, inclusive and representative data to inform decision-making and adequate protection of privacy. Open government initiatives are improving in line with global initiatives for default-open practices but Canada has thus far been focused on data repositories and access to government data and research, rather than supporting academic-led research. In fact, academic research is explicitly prohibited from accessing some resources (e.g. electoral rolls) that in comparable jurisdictions are available to their social scientists upon application. A piecemeal set of alliances and networks exist in Canada to support various aspects of social science but leave gaps in the support of quantitative social methods. This IRG will undertake literature review, expert methods, workshops and/or public surveys. By its end we will synthesize the state of quantitative social science in Canada, widely mobilize knowledge about best practices and trade-offs, and make recommendations for social science data infrastructure and public policy to foster quantitative social science research for the public interest.

Two papers out on Bay of Fundy by Elson

Figure 4 in Galang et al (2025) in Sustainability Science, showing increases in empathy measures.

Figure 4 in Galang et al (2025) in Sustainability Science, showing increases in empathy measures.

Kudos to McGill Bennett-lab NSERC ResNet PhD student Elson Galang whose first two PhD papers came out this past week, both based (at least in part) on the workshops that he led at SMU about the Bay of Fundy NSERC ResNet case study in November 2022. The first one came out in Sustainability Science on January 16th, Co-imagining future scenarios can enhance environmental actors’ empathy toward future generations and non-human life-forms, that found measurable impacts on participants’ empathy towards future people and other life forms, the latter even lasting 3 months after the event. This is tantalizing evidence of the value of participating in the development of environmental scenarios. The second paper came out in Environmental Science & Policy on Jan 21st, Participatory scenario planning: A social learning approach to build systems thinking and trust for sustainable environmental governance. This shares more good news about participation in such processes in relation to the cognitive, relational and normative dimensions of social learning. Both papers also describe innovative methodological tools for assessing these complex ideas. Congratulations, Elson!

 

Eastern shore citizen science for TranSECT

Camilo Botero presents the project and preliminary results to the community at the Sheet Harbour Lion’s Club.

Thanks to Moira Donovan for the great article out on CBC today, Eastern Shore project harnesses community for climate science. The piece is about one of the 14 work packages within TranSECT, the large research project I co-lead out of the new CFREF project Transforming Climate Action. The Dal-based team for this work package about risk governance and citizen science comprises Camilo Botero, Ron Pelot and Floris Goerlandt, in partnership with Eastern Shore churches and schools. This article provides me a great excuse to post a few pictures from the end of November when TranSECT co-lead Ian Stewart and I attended an event in Sheet Harbour recognizing the end of the pilot phase of this innovative citizen science project.

The Bishop of the Anglican church diocese that is a key partner for the project reflects on what she has heard. 

On the return, Ian and I spied these across the inlet and went across to investigate: massive ‘transition pieces’ for offshore wind turbines, shipped there from Europe and awaiting further transportation to Martha’s Vineyard in the US). Soon I expect we’ll be seeing more of these arriving for use off Nova Scotia.

New paper: from sustainable grazing learner to leader

On New Year’s Eve, a new paper came out online first and OA in Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems led by former postdoc Brooke McWherter, called From learner to leader: exploring learning, motivations, and roles of regenerative grazing mentors. This paper emerged from her collaboration with Farmers for Climate Solutions and the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association, funded by FCS and Mitacs, that followed and assessed the national  Farm Resilience Mentorship Program (FaRM) for adaptive grazing. This paper is based on interviews with half of the program’s mentors that explored their own learning journeys, and how and why they became mentors to others. I a meta move, Brooke also mentored MREM alum and RA Hunar Arora, who is a co-author on this piece.

Two people labelled social supports and mentor pull a learner up a stylized hill showing various stages of learning.

Figure 2 in the new ASFS paper led by Brooke, showing the process of becoming a mentor.

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