Meet the Team
Dr. Theresa Selfa is the Principal Investigator of the project. She is Professor and Chair of the Environmental Studies department at the State University of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF). Her research focuses on environmental governance, and social and political dimensions of emerging technologies in agriculture and food. Recent publications focus on: 1) governing gene editing in agriculture in the US; 2) place attachment and cultural ecosystems services in forest plantation landscapes in Argentina; and 3) the role of local knowledge and values in reshaping Payment for Hydrological Services Programs in Veracruz, Mexico. Her field research is based in the US and Latin America.
Ashmita Das is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Environmental Science at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF). Her broad research interests include food systems and agroecology, public participation in environmental decision-making, and environmental education. Her current research focuses on how perceptions of risk, naturalness, and sustainability in agriculture differ based on sociocultural context, values, and systems of knowledge, and how these perceptions affect willingness of counter-movements to accept and/or contest gene-editing technology. Ashmita holds an M.S. in Environmental Science from SUNY ESF and a B.S. in Environmental Science from SUNY Binghamton. Prior to beginning graduate school, she worked as an urban environmental educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Onondaga County.
Dr. Diana Cordoba is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Studies at Queen’s University, Canada. Her interdisciplinary research combines natural science with social science approaches and focuses on the use of applied sociology in food system analysis, technology development, and the social and environmental impacts of new practices, technologies, and models of rural and territorial development. She has thus far focused on the Americas, specifically Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and broader regional-scale analyses of Central America and South America’s Southern Cone.
Dr. Silje Kristiansen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen, the Chair of the International Communication Association’s Environmental Communication division, and an Associate Editor of the Environmental Communication journal. She is a communication scholar who focuses on public communication of environmental, scientific, health and risk issues, as well as public perception of related topics. She also conducts research related to environmentally sustainable behavior. Two of her most recent co-authored publications look at how (1) the mass media portray animal agriculture’s impact on the climate, and (2) cell-based meat. An upcoming publication investigates how the US Green New Deal was politically polarized by the media.
Dr. Donald Lee has taught genetics, biotechnology and plant science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Agriculture and Natural Resources for over 30 years. He has worked with teams to create learning environments and lessons focused on the application of life science learning to problem solving in agriculture. These resources are shared globally through the open-source Plant and Soil Science eLibrary (https://passel2.unl.edu/). His research has examined how learning style variation affects student approaches to the use of online resources and writing in applied life science courses.
Dr. Sara Velardi is a Lecturer in the Environmental Studies Program at Binghamton University. Her research and teaching interests focus on the human dimensions of agriculture and natural resources. Her dissertation research explored the statewide and national genetically modified organism (GMO) labeling initiatives in the U.S., with particular focus on the social conflict and policy development in the Northeast. In her teaching, Velardi incorporates community-engaged research and learning experiences for students with an interest in understanding how community engagement impacts learning and development for students and communities alike.
Dr. Anke Wonneberger (PhD) is an associate professor in corporate communication at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam (UvA), the Netherlands. Her current research topics include strategic communication of nonprofit organizations and environmental communication. She is particularly interested in the role of environmental nonprofit organizations and social movements in public discourses. She is studying specific discourses, for instance, on climate change, renewable energies, and animal welfare, or compares strategic communication of nonprofits to other types of organizations. Anke is teaching courses on strategic communication and sustainability communication in the Communication Science master program at the UvA.
Dr. Tomiko Yamaguchi is a Professor of Sociology at International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo. She is currently on the Board of Councillors of ICU, and the Board of Directors of the Japanese Society for Science and Technology Studies. She has won major research grants from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, as well as grants from the Cabinet Office and the Japan Science and Technology Agency. Yamaguchi’s research is in the sociology of science, technology, and agriculture and food, and the politics of scientific knowledge in emerging fields of life sciences where epistemologies of science collide with social and political issues. She has published numerous research papers in journals including Science, Technology, and Human Values and Food Policy as well as books (in Japanese) “Simulation, Prediction, and Society: The Politics of Forecasting” (University of Tokyo Press) and “Sociological Approaches to Emerging Science and Technology” (Kyoto University Press).
Previous Team Members
Dr. Carmen Bain is Associate Dean for Academic Innovation and Professor of Sociology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Iowa State University. Dr. Bain's research and teaching interests include the governance of agricultural and food systems; gender, agriculture and international development; and the social dimensions of agricultural biotechnologies. She has conducted research in Chile, Ghana, the EU, New Zealand, Uganda and the U.S.
Dr. Seiko Ishihara-Shineha is an Associate Professor of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jissen Women's University in Japan. She received her PhD in Biostudies from Kyoto University in 2009, and the title of her dissertation was “Molecular biological analysis of oxygen-evolving complex protein families in higher plants”. After three years of experience as a research administrator in Teijin Ltd., a materials and chemical manufacturer, she turned her field to science communication and resumed her academic career. Her current research focus is on practice and policy analysis of science communication.
Hikari Anzai is a graduate from College of Liberal Arts, International Christian University in 2021, with a major in sociology and gender and sexuality studies. Hikari's senior thesis was written about social dimensions of baby technology from the gendered division of childrearing perspectives and was awarded the best paper award from the gender and sexuality studies program.
Will Feucht is an undergraduate student at Iowa State University in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). He is currently a senior double majoring in Agricultural Business and Agriculture and Society. His interests include trade policy, especially relating to agriculture as well as consumer awareness and understanding related to production agriculture and food safety.
Sunny Guyette is an undergraduate student at the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF). She is majoring in Environmental Studies focused in communication and society and minoring in Indigenous studies. Her interests include the communication and education of environmental and social issues, specifically relating to Indigenous communities.
Hana Ishii is a graduate student at the Hokkaido University, Graduate School of Environmental Science. Research disciplines are paleoclimatology and science communication. She is researching climate conditions around Antarctica in the past warm period. She has completed a one-year science communicator training program in 2021. In addition, she has been a research assistant on a project which searches for communicative activities related to plant gene editing.