FACULTY
John (Jack) Barile |
I have long been interested in health and quality of life but narrowed my focus on efforts to improve the lives of traditionally marginalized communities after years of work within traditional psychiatric facilities and community-based social services. My goal as a researcher and educator has been to understand the dynamic interactions that occur between people and place in hopes to improve the circumstances for those who may otherwise be left behind. I believe that people can make a difference when we focus our efforts on cooperation over competition, remember that context matters, and never ignore alternative views.
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David W. Beilman |
Terrestrial ecosystems take up a substantial portion of humankind’s carbon emissions, making the sensitivity/resilience of terrestrial carbon a crucial part of our climate future. My work as a researcher and educator aims to further better understanding of current and past land ecosystem structure and function. I have pursued this challenge in government and university settings in the U.S., Canada, and the UK, including the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa since 2009.
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Leah Bremer |
I am an Environmental Management Assistant Specialist with the UH Economics Research Organization (UHERO) and the Water Resources Research Center (WRRC). As a geographer by training, I am drawn to inter-disciplinary, collaborative, and participatory research around land and water management futures. I am particularly interested in policies and strategies to support watershed management and planning for multiple cultural, socio-economic, hydrologic, and ecological benefits. My work focuses on water resources management and planning in Hawaiʻi and on water funds and compensation for ecosystem services programs in the Andes. I have an MS in Conservation Biology from Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) and Macquarie University (Australia) and a PhD in Geography from UC Santa Barbara and San Diego State University.
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Steven Bond-Smith |
Steven joined UHERO as an Assistant Professor in 2021. Steven’s main research focus is the implications of distance and scale for productivity and growth in small and isolated economies such as Hawai’i. This research helps to understand regional growth dynamics and supports development of place-based policy approaches, informed by theory and data, to support economic growth for more people in more places. Steven is a co-editor for the journal Spatial Economic Analysis. Prior to joining UHERO, Steven was a Senior Research Fellow in Economics at Curtin University in Western Australia. Steven was previously employed in various government, corporate and consulting roles in Australia and New Zealand providing economic advice to government departments, regulators, businesses and stakeholders.
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Kimberly Burnett |
Kimberly joined UHERO in July 2008 as a Research Economist. Her primary research interests include environmental and natural resource economics, invasive species management, and watershed management, particularly for Hawaii and the Pacific. Kimberly’s publications and extramural grants have focused on invasive species and watershed management, groundwater management and the value of watershed conservation.
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Patricia Amaral Buskirk (she/her) is an Associate Professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s School of Communication and Information. Her research and creative work focuses on science communication, civic engagement, oral history and indigenous storytelling in all forms of mediated communication to help make a difference in promoting the quality of life for our communities.
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Makena Coffman is the Director for the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Institute for Sustainability and Resilience. She is a Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and Research Fellow with the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization. Her research interests include climate change adaptation, energy policy and alternative transportation strategies.
The Institute for Sustainability and Resilience (ISR) provides campus-wide leadership and coordination for interdisciplinary education, research and outreach related to climate change, environmental sustainability and community resilience in Hawai‘i and beyond. For more information, see: manoa.hawaii.edu/isr |
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Dr. Ruben Enrique Campos III is a Student Support Specialist in Advising, Civic Engagement in the Social Sciences and a lecturer in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. As a specialist, his primary focus is developing a sense of belonging for students through campus and community engagement. As an anthropologist, he researches aurality, urban mobility, and identity. He published “Hip-hop, La Crónica and Epiphany in Mexico City: Performative Research, Methodological Identities and Affective Analysis” in Life Writing 18.4; “‘I’m about to get really racist’: Racialization, Resistance and the Local in Hawai‘i Battle Rap.” Social Process in Hawai’i 46, co-authored with Roderick N. Labrador, and Ethan Caldwell; and “The Posse Cut as Autobiographic Utterance of Place in The Night Marchers’ Three Dots.” in Biography, An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 41.3. He also collaborates with Pau Hana Sessions and Island Connections to create Audio Visual Studies in Ethnicity in Hawai'i, Korea and Japan.
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Priyam Das |
Dr. Das studies water governance in the global South, particularly the barriers to extending water and wastewater infrastructure and services to settlements outside so-called formal planning systems. Broadly framed by two key questions – to what extent are such barriers related to issues of governance and how do strategies deployed by different actors to improve access to such services inform planning and policy – her research sharpens focus on problems of inequality, poverty, and disenfranchisement.
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Micah Fisher |
Micah R. Fisher conducts research on the human-dimensions of environmental change such as deforestation, land degradation, and urbanization in the Asia-Pacific. Recent research has focused on deforestation, land rights, and tenure policies in Indonesia and Southeast Asia; Disaster risk, vulnerability, and water insecurity in Greater Jakarta; Agrarian change and livelihoods in Sulawesi; and Technologies of Participation.
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Noelani Goodyear-Kaopua |
He Kanaka Maoli Hawaiʻi au. ʻO Oʻahu kuʻu one hānau. My interest in the political stems from my earliest days, as a keiki born to young activists who were also UH undergraduates. My parents raised me around student movements and exposed me to many ways Hawaiʻi communities were organizing against evictions, environmental degradation, and economic injustice in the 1970s and 80s. As a UH undergraduate myself in the 1990s, I was surrounded by teachers and fellow students participating in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. From this movement, I have learned that the most valuable places to invest our time and energy are into education and into the ʻāina. One of my primary goals is to nurture students who are critical thinkers and doers, equipped to stand up for what they believe in.
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Dr. Ulla Hasager is Director of Civic Engagement for the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s College of Social Sciences. She oversees academic community engagement for students and faculty and leads engaged curriculum creation, as well as professional and program development across communities, institutions, and disciplines. At the university level, she serves as a leading engagement scholar. An anthropologist, Dr. Hasager teaches Ethnic Studies and general Social Sciences courses and combines her research with active engagement in human and environmental rights issues. As co-director of SENCER Center for Innovation West, and SENCER Hawaiʻi leader, she is involved in several joint projects with researchers and practitioners across the US. Dr. Hasager was raised in Denmark, but now has a large Native Hawaiian family and lives in Kane'ohe on the Island of Oʻahu. {Needs updates/revisions]
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Marina Karides is a Professor of Geography and Environment. Her work centers intersectional feminisms and decolonial analytical frameworks to address matters of geography, environment, and society. She has developed island feminisms as an approach to address inequalities on islands with published works centering on higher education in Hawai’i and alternative economics and food systems in the Aegean. Her current research focuses on natural wine as a global social and environmental justice movement with field work completed in South Africa, Argentina, and Italy. She identifies as a scholar-activist and her past research has addressed the impact of the World Social Forums and race and ethnicity in the food justice movements.
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Jennifer Kagan |
Following law school, I worked for about seven years as an attorney in the private sector. Ultimately, my passions for environmental and social justice and interest in the nonprofit sector, where I had worked before law school, led me to pursue degrees in public administration. While at the University of Colorado Denver, I had opportunities to research Hawaiiʻs renewable portfolio standard (RPS), energy policy in Rwanda, and hydraulic fracturing policy across the US. I also spent time in Uganda studying a network of nongovernmental organization (NGO) service providers. While I draw on my diverse background in the classroom, I believe we all have much to learn from each other and encourage students to share their experiences.
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Aurora Kagawa-Viviani |
I identify as an ecohydrologist and a geographer. I also identify as an urban Honolulu-raised kanaka ʻōiwi, which informs my relationship to Hawaiʻi and its peoples. Prior to earning my PhD, I worked across the Hawaiian Islands in conservation and education, supporting ʻāina-based (place-based) and Indigenous STEM program development. These experiences shape my vision for integrated research, teaching, and service underpinned by a desire to address societal and environmental problems related to global change. I strive to conduct research that is both responsive to community needs and also advances fundamental understanding of water, ecosystems, and the roles of humans on the landscape.
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Kyle Kajihiro |
As a yonsei (fourth-generation Japanese in Hawaiʻi), I am keenly aware of Hawaiʻi’s complex and ever-changing ethnic, racial, gender, and class dynamics, as well as our islands’ complicated relationship to the United States and the wider Pacific region. I grew up and currently live in Mōʻiliʻili, once a thriving Kanaka ʻŌiwi agricultural landscape, later a center of the Japanese community, and now a multi-ethnic urban neighborhood undergoing dramatic changes. I typically teach courses focusing on Japanese and Okinawan experiences in Hawaiʻi, Asian American history, ethnic identity, social movements, settler and Indigenous solidarity, and critiques of U.S. militarism and imperialism. I encourage students to apply their creativity and critical thinking skills to address contemporary problems of social and environmental justice.
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Aya H. Kimura is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the University of Hawaiʻi Center on Sustainability Across the Curriculum. She has MA in Environmental Studies (Yale) and Ph.D. in Sociology (University of Wisconsin-Madison). Her books include RadiationBrain Moms and Citizen Scientists: The Gender Politics of Food Contaminationafter Fukushima (Duke University Press: recipient of the Rachel Carson Book Award from the Society for Social Studies of Science) and Hidden Hunger:Gender and Politics of Smarter Foods (Cornell University Press: recipient of the Outstanding Scholarly Award from the Rural Sociological Society).
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Dr. Hye-ryeon Lee |
Hye-ryeon Lee is Professor and Chair of the School of Communication and Information, and a faculty of the UH Cancer Center and the Center for Korean Studies. As a health communication scholar, she researches how culture and communication influence health behaviors among socially and culturally diverse populations. She conducts her research in combination with actual communication interventions that are set in the community setting. Her work has appeared in major journals, including the Journal of Health Communication, the American Journal of Public Health, Health Psychology, the Journal of Community Health, Social Science and Medicine, and Cancer Epidemiology.
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Ketty Loeb |
Ketty Loeb is a faculty member in the Institute for Sustainability and Resilience. With nearly two decades of professional experience spanning academia, the public, non-profit, and private sectors, she offers a wealth of knowledge about sustainability and resilience strategies both locally and globally. Her research interests include climate change adaptation and mitigation, philanthropy and civil society capacity building, social movements, and politics in the Asia Pacific. She has raised and managed $70M in programmatic and research grants during her career. Doctor Loeb holds a BA in Asian Studies from University of Puget Sound (1997) and an MA and PhD in Political Science from University of Washington (2014).
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Keahiahi Long |
Mai ka malu o ka lau naupaka o Maunalua, welina me ke aloha kākou e nā hoa noiʻi nowelo! My name is Keahiahi Sharon Long, I grew up on Oʻahu and currently live with my ʻohana in Maunalua. My ʻohana are hula people – we’ve been dancing for several generations. Hula shapes how I see the world. Hula is the movement of memory, the repository of our stories, genealogies, values. Herein lies my love for libraries and their possibilities as transformative spaces for community empowerment. In all that I do as an information worker and knowledge caretaker, I aim to center and celebrate undersupported and underrepresented voices.
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John Lynham |
I am a Professor of Economics at the University of Hawaiʻi and a Research Fellow with UHERO. In the past, I have held Visiting Professor positions at Udayana University in Indonesia, IÉSEG School of Management in Paris, and at Stanford University in California. My area of specialty is the Ocean Economy. I acknowledge that the ‘āina on which I work and live is part of the larger territory recognized by Indigenous Hawaiians as their ancestral grandmother: Papahānaumoku.
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Davianna Pomaikai McGregor |
Professor McGregor is founding member of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, is a historian of Hawai’i and the Pacific. Her PhD in Hawaiian and Pacific History was completed at the University of HawaiʻI, Mānoa in 1989. Her ongoing research endeavors document the persistence of traditional Hawaiian cultural customs, beliefs, and practices in rural Hawaiian communities, including the island of Moloka’i; the districts of Puna and Ka’u on Hawai’i; Ke’anae-Wailuanui on Maui and Waiahole-Waikane on O’ahu. This work is featured in her 2007 UH Press book, Kua’aina: Living Hawaiian Culture which won the Kenneth W. Balridge Prize for best book in any field of history written by a resident of Hawai’i from 2005-2007.
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Felix Mantz teaches and researches in the Political Science Department at UHM. Mantz completed his graduate studies at King’s College London and Queen Mary University of London. His research focuses on the ways in which political ecologies are entangled with colonial systems of power. Drawing on multiple critical theories, especially anti/decolonial, anarchist, and Indigenous thought, I am particularly interested in questions of land, autonomy, food, and extractivism. Following Zapatismo, through my teaching and research I seek to recover, (re)build, and defend a world in which many worlds fit. Most of my work has a regional focus on East Africa and Mesoamerica.
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Dan Milz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and the Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution. Dr. Milz studies the science and politics of environmental planning by analyzing how people think about ecological systems as they make plans and propose new policies.He investigates the cognitive aspects of practical environmental judgments in participatory settings to observe how stakeholders learn to make better plans. Dr. Milz researches the role that data visualization tools play in supporting planning processes, and he explores how professional facilitators help local stakeholders improve planning and policy outcomes.
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Mary Mostafanezhad is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Her work is broadly focused on development and socio-environmental change in Southeast Asia. Collectively, Mary has published ten books and more than 80 articles and chapters on these themes (see Google Scholar). Her current monograph manuscript, Particulate Politics: The Making and Unmaking of Environmental-Health Crisis in Northern Thailand, is based on National Science Foundation-supported work that examines the region's causes and consequences of seasonal air pollution. Mary is also the co-editor-in-chief of Tourism Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment (Ranked #2/779 journals in Geography, Planning & Development - 2022 CiteScore) and a co-editor of the Critical Green Engagements Series of the University of Arizona Press.
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Jonathan Padwe |
I came to anthropology with a background in international development, after years working at non governmental organizations, as a community organizer and as a program officer in a private philanthropy. I entered graduate school seeking to understand why development projects so often fail to improve the lives of those whom they seek to help. Questions of equity and inequality are central to this problem, and my work today continues to investigate these issues within processes of social and environmental change.
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Seth Quintus is an archaeologist and associate professor in the Department of Anthropology. His research examines the recursive relationship between humans and their environments over long periods of time, especially in Oceania. He does this through the lens of environment management, agricultural economies, and political economies. In this work, he has partnered with local communities, Kamehameha Schools, and the National Park Service to better understand how past information on socioecological systems can contribute to better resource management today.
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Subhashni Raj |
Subhashni began her career in microbiology, studying the impact of sea surface temperatures on coral health in Fiji. A failed sampling expedition made her realize that poor land-use was a much larger threat in the territorial waters of Fiji than climate change at the time. At this realization she pivoted and started a career in regional development, bringing integrated water resource management governance principles to Pacific Island Countries through SOPAC (now the Pacific Community). A chance meeting with Professor Coffman, then redirected her career trajectory towards urban planning. A Fulbright scholarship brought her to Buffalo, NY for her masters in urban planning, followed by a Kaufman fellowship for her doctoral work. She then returned to her native Fiji and worked for UN Women to lead their climate change programming. When opportunity came knocking, she and her husband moved to Davis, California to pursue a postdoc with Dr Catherine Brinkley. In pursuit of the Academic dream, she moved to Oahu in 2022, with her husband, Jeffrey Fine, and toddler (Nikhil).
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Michael Roberts |
Michael Roberts is a Professor in the Department of Economics, University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization (UHERO), and Sea Grant at UH Manoa. My research focuses on effects of agricultural policies, impacts of climate change on agriculture, commodity pricing, renewable energy, water, and experimental economics. I enjoy interdisciplinary research and publish in both science and economics journals. I have served on several other editorial boards for leading agricultural, environmental and resource economics journals, and am currently a Co-Editor at the Journal of Association of Environmental and Resource Economics.
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James Roumasset |
Dr. Roumasset’s primary areas of research stem an NSF grant on energy substitution and sustainable development, the ERS/USDA PREISM program and a number of USGS grants on the sustainable development and conservation of water resources. He has previously held positions at UC Davis, the University of the Philippines, ANU, Yale, the University of Maryland, the International Rice Research Institute, and the World Bank, where he worked as a long-term consultant on irrigation economics. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Western Economic Association International and the editorial boards of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Contemporary Economic Policy, Asian Journal of Agriculture and Development, Asian Journal of Agricultural Economics, and SE Asian Journal of Agricultural Economics. His publications and extramural grants during the last 10 years have focused on developing new methods for policy analysis for resource and environmental management problems in Hawaii and the Asia-Pacific Region and promoting new connections both between and within disciplines via sustainability science. He has also published widely on agricultural development, transaction cost economics, risk and decision-making, and the nature, causes and consequences of public policy.
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Suwan Shen |
Suwan’s primary research focuses on the interaction between critical infrastructure system and the changing environment, with a particular emphasis on climate change vulnerability. Suwan’s work examines the vulnerability of critical infrastructures and explores the adaptation options to climate change using transportation and land use models, spatial analysis, and environment projection and simulations. Through case studies, Suwan has conducted research to examine the vulnerability of emergency services to projected storm surge, estimate the impacts of sea level rise and changing rainfall patterns on transportation network, evaluate the effectiveness of common adaptation strategies, and explore the factors influencing the local vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Currently, Suwan is working on projects investigating the social sensitivity to the impacts of coastal flooding on transportation, especially for socially vulnerable populations, through community surveys and social media data.
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Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng is a Faculty Specialist in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She also serves as the University’s liaison to the Obama Foundation and works with the Foundation’s Leaders program and Global Girls Alliance on initiatives in Hawaiʻi and the Asia-Pacific region. Previously, she was the Director of the Matsunaga Institute for Peace at the University of Hawaiʻi, where, in addition to leading outreach and development initiatives, she also taught Leadership for Social Change, Peace Movements, Peace Education, and Conflict Management. For many years, she worked at the College of Education at the University, where she taught Multicultural Education, Social Studies Methods, and Peace Education at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Maya sits on several voluntary boards and is the Co-Founder of the non-profits Ceeds of Peace, The Peace Studio, and The Institute for Climate and Peace. In 2021, Maya launched a podcast entitled “The Bravethrough Series: Courageous Conversations on Community” in partnership with KTUH Honolulu.
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Sanjeev Sridharan |
Sanjeev Sridharan is Professor of Health Policy Evaluation at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Previously he was the Country Lead, Learning Systems and Systems Evaluation at the India Country Office of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to this position, Sanjeev was Director of the Evaluation Centre for Complex Health Interventions at St. Michaels Hospital and Associate Professor at the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. He is a former Associate Editor of the American Journal of Evaluation and has been on boards of the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, New Directions for Evaluation and Evaluation and Program Planning. Presently, he is an Evaluation Advisor to the United Nations Internal Oversight Services—as part of his role in the advisory committee, he advises on evaluation designs for evaluations conducted by United
Nations organizations. The focus of his work is on operationalizing the concept of sustainable impacts in evaluations. His recent papers on sustainable impacts include “Re-imagining the role of evaluation in planning for sustainability of gender equity interventions” and “Till time (and poor planning) do us apart: Programs as dynamic Systems—Incorporating planning of sustainability into Theories of Change.” |
Krisna Suryanata |
I am a human geographer working in the critical analysis of ecological sustainability. I was born and raised in Indonesia with a technical training and professional experience in soil sciences and remote sensing. In becoming a geographer, I combine this technical knowledge with insights from political economy, for a more holistic approach to understanding natural resource management and processes of agrarian change. In my classes, I urge students to critically assess how historical and environmental processes link people and influence human relationships.
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Nori Tarui is a Professor of Economics and a Research Fellow in the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization (UHERO). He also serves as a Co-Director of Renewable Energy and Island Sustainability (REIS) Graduate Certificate Program.
He has an MA in Economics (Keio) and a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics (Minnesota). His research fields are environmental, energy, and resource economics. His research interest is in electric utility regulation, energy policy, and assessing strategies for climate change mitigation and adaptation. He is a recipient of the Outstanding Publications Award from the Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies (SEEPS) in 2021. |
Andrew Wertheimer |
My teaching builds on my varied experience in academic, public and special libraries, and archives. I run the academic library and archives pathways in the LIS Program. I’m excited to be part of the new School of Communication and Information since I can build on experience in publishing and bookselling, photography, and journalism. Ever since elementary school I’ve been fascinated by books, libraries, and international media, and how these can have the potential to promote democracy and how censorship thwarts it. I’ve been a leader in the American Library Association and associations that bridge with LIS researchers in Asia.
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Jenifer Sunrise Winter is a Professor in the School of Communication and Information and Co-Director of the Pacific Information and Communication Technology for Development Collaborative (PICTDC) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her research addresses data governance and policy related to big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT). She is interested in data governance, as well as a range of projects that address information and communication technologies (ICT) and data for social good.
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