Position Title
D.E. in African Studies
Ecology Graduate Group
As a Ph.D. student in Ecology with an emphasis in Agroecology and a designated emphasis in African Studies, Marie is interested in the way legacies of land use including colonialism, imperialism, conflict, resistance, agriculture, foraging, and traditional and cultural practices have influenced environmental conditions and continue to shape human-land relationships. The socio-ecological informational and material legacies of the past influence the present, and by negotiating the narratives and histories of a place we can reimagine a more just and robust land future. Marie considers her work to be transdisciplinary or co-disciplinary. She uses participatory community research methods to engage stakeholders as agents of change in the land restoration and research process. Currently, she is working on a biocultural land restoration project in the SAVA region of Madagascar. With an excellent team of Malagasy researchers, they continue to conduct focus groups and botanical plot inventories to examine both the socio-cultural and ecological factors influencing land use change within forest-food frontline communities.