Camille’s doctoral research examined the effects of rapid urban development on regional food ecologies and economies by tracing the fresh fruit and vegetable supply chain that connects urban consumers with peri-urban producers in Bengaluru, India. She is the author of the “Teaching with Hope” series and Co-Editor of the Teaching Tools section of Cultural Anthropology. She is currently Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Clarkson University.

Courtney is an ethnographer and visual storyteller. Her current work focuses on climate change adaptation below melting glaciers in Peru, and she is also interested in social justice issues with respect to environmental projects. As a photojournalist, her photography and stories have been featured in publications such as National Geographic News, ABC News, Savage Minds, and the Gear Co-op — and she’s worked as an Assistant Producer on the Emmy Award winning documentary Valley Uprising. 

Stefan grew up in Anchorage and received a B.A. in Film Studies at Seattle University where he founded an after-school filmmaking program and received an MFA from UCLA. His filmmaking experience includes directing a documentary about a literacy program and working with the university to film footage at urban farms in Washington, as well as producing and directing a documentary in Point Hope, Alaska about the changing climate and culture. At UCLA, he wrote, directed and produced several short films, and worked as the sound mixer/assistant editor on a behind-the-scenes documentary about Live Cinema with Francis Ford Coppola.

Cailey’s dissertation researched changing understandings of digestion and the body in the context of evolving food systems in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. As an undergraduate at Princeton, she co-edited The Nassau Weekly and wrote for The Daily Princetonian. Prior to graduate school, she worked as an editorial assistant at Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Spencer Robins is a PhD candidate in the English Department. His research focuses on narratives of collective action and worldmaking in response to environmental change. He has also worked as a writer and researcher on projects with the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS). His writing has appeared in the Paris Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and at kcet.org. 

Following graduation, Manali assumed a position as Senior Program Coordinator at Partner Energy.

Peggy began her doctoral studies with the IoES in 2017 while working full-time at the City of Los Angeles as an environmental specialist. During her 16 years with the City, she helped inspire support for the creation of the LA Parks Foundation and the Griffith Park Wildlife Management Plan; co-founded Friends of the LAX Dunes (FOLD) by empowering community members (FOLD eventually became a partnership between The Bay Foundation and LA World Airports (LAWA)) and an internal partnership between the LA Zoo and LAWA that is enabling the gradual removal of invasive weeds from the 307-acre El Segundo Blue Butterfly Reserve;  spearheaded agency- and city-wide business process/capital improvement program/project management training/design and technical standard/policy improvements in support of climate adaptation, biodiversity conservation and enhancement, and environmental justice; helped with the development and measurement of the City’s Biodiversity Index; and worked with the sanitation industry to advocate for federal and state pollution source reduction solutions and funding.

For her residency, Peggy Nguyen has worked as a senior environmental scientist/project manager, and after earning her Engineer in Training license, is now working as a hazardous substances engineer and project manager at the CalEPA Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) where she is supporting implementation of Governor Newsom’s Cleaning-up Vulnerable Communities Initiative in workforce development and contaminated site identification and cleanup efforts in vulnerable communities, and sea level rise planning. 

Peggy Nguyen earned a M.S. in Environmental Science, Policy and Management from U.C. Berkeley, an M.Ed. from UCLA, and a Graduate Academic Certificate in Restoration Ecology from the University of Idaho. She completed her science/math foundational coursework at Harvard University as a pre-med, and earned a B.A. in Psychobiology/Psychology.

Her interest in environmental science and engineering is broadly interdisciplinary and deep, and she hopes to continue to dive deep during her doctoral studies and work on interesting interdisciplinary project teams to help to put in service to the public the best available integrated policy, science, environmental management and engineering and technological solutions for challenging environmental problems.

Education:

• UC Extension, Non-Profit Management, Project Management, Sustainable Business, Technical Program Manager
• M.S., Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources
• M.Ed., Bilingual Cultural Language Acquisition and Development/Urban Science Education, UCLA Center X Teacher Education Program
• Graduate Academic Certificate, Restoration Ecology, University of Idaho
• B.A. with high honors, Psychology/Psychobiology/Pre-Med, Harvard University