Kate Sherren

Landscapes - People - Global change

Tag: research trainees (Page 1 of 24)

A strange start to fall 2025

September 15, 2025 /

The Sherren lab, sans Sherren, fall 2025

Solidarity on the picket line

I was thrilled to have some of my lab members join the picket line today, after they had their own informal meet-and-greet at the Glitterbean Cafe (above). An extended lockout is not how any supervisor would like to start a new school year, but it is wonderful to see the fellowship and mentorship that can happen without a professor driving things, too. I finally got to meet Bethany and Anna in person, both new MES students (though I had also briefly met Bethany at CAG last year), and see Chris (new PhD) and Elson (new PDF) who I have already spent plenty of time with. Alex and Keahna, who set up the student meeting, also came along to the picket line. I also had a great chance to finally meet Maria in person: she is the Dal AC grad who is in transition to a PhD at the University of Tasmania and who has been providing research support on my Australian repeat photography dataset from last year.

Me and RA Maria post-picket

Seeing these young scholars is just another great reminder for all, hopefully including the Dalhousie Board, just what Dalhousie is for. I’m looking very forward to soon getting back to the work I love.

New paper: ES policy entrepreneurship in municipalities

July 18, 2025 /

Multiple streams theory in practice.

Kudos to Kate Thompson, IDPhD 2024, for publishing the last of her main dissertation papers this week in Environmental Management. This OA paper, Policy entrepreneurship in urban planning: Tactics for promoting and engaging the ecosystem services concept for urban environmental sustainability, draws on her qualitative data in three Canadian municipalities. The dissertation did not set out to use the multiple streams theories of public administration, but the connections emerged organically. Eleven of her 31 interviewees demonstrated the characteristics of an entrepreneur–“persistent and resourceful public policy actors who advocate for ideas and policy proposals they favor”–finding and leveraging opportunities within their domain of power to achieve things that are not officially their job. These entrepreneurs engineer couplings of the three streams to achieve environmental policy objectives. It was very interesting to work on this with Kate, especially after learning about these ideas of entrepreneurship at the provincial level around managed dyke realignment through earlier collaborations with PDF Tuihedur Rahman. Bravo, Kate!

Congratulations summer 2025 graduates

July 3, 2025 /

Me, Yan and Mike Smit after her IDPhD graduation in June, 2025.

Two weeks ago I enjoyed attending the ‘spring’ graduation (which happened very late this year) to watch our most recent MREM cohort cross the stage, and one MES (they tend to defend in the summer so attend the fall one). IDPhD graduate Dr. Yan Chen also received her degree, after deferring from the fall graduation, and her co-supervisor Mike Smit and I were both on the stage for the event. We also got to bring her back to sit with us for the rest of the ceremony. Another great thrill was having 2002 MES alumna Karen Hudson receive an Honorary Doctorate in the same ceremony, and give the address. We welcomed all the above graduates and their families back in the SRES suite for a reception after the event, sponsored by the Faculty of Science. Congratulations, all! And to those whose stage photos I ended up in, sorry for my tassel malfunction.  Outgoing FGS Dean Marty Leonard didn’t warn me she was going to call me up for official photobombing.  🙂

Coastal Zone Canada 2025

June 20, 2025 /

 

Alex Legault presents his work on the Acadian diaspora and dykeland stakeholdership to CZC2025.

Athena Iraji talks about her early findings with Nancy Anningson from TransCoastal.

Four members of my team went to Coastal Zone Canada in PEI last week, and reported an excellent event. Colleagues from TranSECT and TransCoastal also participated in many sessions there. I certainly wish I could have attended, especially after I heard that A. R. Siders was the keynote. Alex Legault (above) presented his work on the Acadian diaspora, including the new plan to put the survey back in the field to try to acquire wider perspectives. Athena Iraji presented a poster on her very first results as she explores whether the timeline of the Coastal Protection Act actually expedited coastal development in the year of its passing. We’re so grateful to CZC for the support they gave Athena to attend this event. Keahna Margeson presented the results of her second PhD paper, which uses survey results around causeway sites in NB and NS to understand what drives support for river restoration. Finally Robin Willcocks Musselman presented the results of her recent paper on place and managed retreat, and introduced her empirical research plan. I hope CZC stops scheduling for the same week as IASNR, so I can attend the next one.

New paper: Bay of Fundy system dynamics and scenarios

April 15, 2025 /

Former L1 ResNet postdoc Lara Cornejo has led a tremendous new paper, out open access this week in Ocean and Coastal Management. The paper, Decision-making and ecosystem service dimensions of managed dyke realignment in the complex coastal landscapes of the Bay of Fundy, updates the simplified one-way flows we conceived for ecosystem service tradeoffs in our baseline 2021 Facets paper. Lara used system dynamics modelling to co-create with a range of experts–from universities, federal and provincial government departments, consulting firms, an ENGO and Indigenous organization (all co-authors)–models showing the decision-making processes leading to managed dyke realignment and the ecosystem service outcomes that result. The models drew on lots of published papers and student theses, and allowed trade-offs and synergies to be synthesized. But she didn’t stop there! She and McGill PhD candidate Elson Galang used the four scenarios that emerged from our environmental futures workshop in late 2022 as thought experiments for the models (see below). It is a great read. Bravo!

Artist Emma Fitzgerald’s visualizations of our four scenarios of environmental futures for the Bay of Fundy dykelands.

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