SOCIAL SCIENCES FACULTY

Email: lidillon@ucsc.edu
Website: http://lindseyldillon.com/

Topics of Interest: 

  • Environmental Justice
  • Political Ecology
  • Spatiality and Power
  • Race & Racisms
  • Science & Technology Studies
  • Ecological Grief
  • Climate Activism

Lindsey Dillon

Affiliated Faculty
Social Sciences
Assistant Professor, Sociology

Professor Dillon’s research focuses on environmental justice, urban ecologies, and histories of race and racism in U.S. cities. Trained as a geographer, she is especially interested the relationship between landscape and power, and brings this analytical focus to the study of coastal regions. Her current projects include a book manuscript on environmental politics in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, focusing on the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, and a separate project on urban sustainability policies.

Email: mfairbai@ucsc.edu
Website: UC AFTeR Project
Phone: 831-502-7645

Topics of Interest: 

  • Agri-food Systems
  • Environmental Sociology
  • Political Ecology
  • Globalization and Development
  • Ownership and Access to Land

Madeleine Fairbairn

Affiliated Faculty
Social Sciences
Associate Professor, Environmental Studies

Professor Fairbairn is a political ecologist whose work focuses on global agri-food systems. Her qualitative research explores the operations of capital within food and agriculture through the lenses of rural sociology and critical human geography. Her current projects explore the financial sector’s growing interest in buying farmland, as well as the dynamics of the burgeoning agri-food technology sector. Her first book, Fields of Gold: Financing the Global Land Rush, was released in 2020 by Cornell University Press.

Email: efinkbei@ucsc.edu; efinkbeiner@conservation.org 
Phone:
+1 925 528 9050
Website:
http://conservation.org/oceans

Topics of Interest:

  • small-scale fisheries governance
  • adaptive capacity
  • resilience
  • social-ecological systems
  • role of diversification in fisheries
  • solution-based science
  • human rights and social justice considerations in natural resource management and conservation
  • environmental entitlements and access

Elena Finkbeiner

Assistant Adjunct Faculty
Social Sciences
Coastal Community Fisheries Program Manager, Conservation International; Assistant Adjunct Professor, Coastal Science & Policy Program

Elena Finkbeiner is the Fisheries Science Program Manager at Conservation International’s Center for Oceans. She holds a master’s degree from Duke University’s Nicholas School for the Environment and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Elena is interested in understanding and improving adaptive capacity and equality within and across fishing communities and integrating a human rights-based approach to fisheries governance. She has over a decade of experience working in small-scale fisheries along the Baja Peninsula.

Prior to joining Conservation International as staff, Finkbeiner was a postdoctoral research associate at Arizona State University’s Center for Biodiversity Outcomes. Her fellowship was co-sponsored by CI and the Nereus Project (The Nippon Foundation).

Radhika Malpani

Adjunct Faculty
Social Sciences
Assistant Adjunct Professor, Coastal Science & Policy Program

Radhika Malpani has over 30 years’ experience in the technology sector, working at leading organizations including Google, Hewlett Packard and Siemens.

At Google, Radhika was a Senior Engineering Director, responsible for initiating and scaling up several critical products over a period of two decades. Starting with leading Google Ads in 2000, Radhika founded Google Images, growing it to over 1B queries/day. In addition to starting Google Local Search, she also led Google Travel Search to help users better plan their leisure trips.

Radhika has always been interested in the application of technology for social impact, and left Google in mid 2019 to focus full-time on helping mission-oriented startups scale. She uses her long experience with building and scaling successful products to help founders think through strategic issues. She is very interested in bringing those same entrepreneurial approaches to educating the next generation of leaders, focusing on practical applications to research. She has partnered with professors at UCSC and Steve Weinstein (Stanford) to create and co-teach Hacking4Oceans, teaching the use of Lean Design methodologies to solve problems critical to coastal and ocean habitats, and is currently working on expanding the class nationally. The class will now also be offered at Univ of Rhode Island, UCSD and Univ of Hawaii by spring 2022.

Email: cpomeroy@ucsc.edu

Topics of Interest:

  • Marine Policy & Ocean Governance
  • Marine Social-Ecological Systems
  • Human Dimensions of Fisheries
  • Marine Space Use Coordination
  • Harmful Algal Blooms
  • Integrated Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis

Carrie Pomeroy

Adjunct Faculty
Social Sciences
Research Social Scientist, UCSC Institute of Marine Sciences; Assistant Adjunct Professor, Coastal Science & Policy Program

Carrie Pomeroy is a social scientist whose work addresses the social, economic and cultural aspects — the “human dimensions” — of marine systems as they affect and are affected by environmental, socioeconomic and regulatory factors, and its application to community planning, resource management, and broader decision-making. Her current work focuses on building capacity to address socioeconomic information needs and objectives for fisheries management, coordinating ocean space use, ensuring a safe and sustainable seafood supply, and adapting to climate change. As a California Sea Grant Extension Specialist, she served for over a decade on the California Dungeness Crab Task Force and the California Salmon Council. She currently serves on the California Ocean Protection

Council Science Advisory Team, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Offshore Science and Assessment for Ocean Energy Management, and the NOAA-BOEM-RODA Synthesis of Science: Fisheries and Offshore Wind – Socioeconomics Author Team.

Email: psarker@ucsc.edu
Website: https://kapsar.sites.ucsc.edu/

Topics of Interest: 

  • Sustainable Aquaculture
  • Sustainable Food Systems
  • Aquaculture and Nutrition
  • Ecological Aquaculture
  • Feed Design, Formulation and Digestibility
  • Fish and Shellfish Nutrition
  • Integrated Aquaculture-Agriculture

Pallab Sarker

Affiliated Faculty
Social Sciences
Assistant  Professor, Environmental Studies Department

Pallab Sarker is a sustainable aquaculture expert, and his research interests involve shifting aquaculture, the world’s fastest-growing food sector, to sustainability by redesigning the composition of aqua-feeds because they drive life-cycle environmental effects of aquaculture, both inputs and emissions. He is developing ecological aquaculture principles and practices to reduce nutrient and carbon emissions and other environmental impact. His current research focuses on developing ocean-friendly fish-free aquaculture diet by combining microalgae to maximize the diet’s nutrient quality, economic viability, and benefits for environmental conservation. His research also focuses on integrated aquaculture-agriculture (IAA) to strengthen sustainable, climate resilient, and equitable stewardship of the food system that produces fish food and fresh vegetables for humans.

Dr. Sarker has been an advisor on the following CSP capstone projects:

‘Sea’ing Further: Closing Knowledge Gaps & Improving Sustainability along the Aquafeed Supply Chain (link coming in June 2024)

Pidgeon Point Lighthouse, Pescadero California