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Social-ecological systems modeller, University of St Andrews

Dr. Jessica Thorn is a Research Associate working with Prof. Marchant on the Development Corridors Partnership, supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund. Concurrently, she holds an African Women in Climate Change Science fellowship (AWiCCS), and Climate Research 4 Development fellowship hosted by the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town, supported by the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences. She combines participatory scenario analysis, probabilistic social-ecological modelling, multi-scalar institutional analysis, and ecosystem service quantification to measure potential impacts of Chinese foreign direct investment in transportation corridors in East Africa on ecosystem service provisioning, livelihoods, and social coherence. She is also interested in the synergies and trade-offs of ecological infrastructure in peri-urban areas in Tanzania and Namibia. As a postdoctoral researcher she worked with Prof. Julia Klein at Colorado State University and Prof. Adrienne Grêt-Regamey at ETH Zurich. She operated within a National Science Foundation-funded research project, the Mountain Sentinels Collaborative Network, to employ probabilistic models and climate and land use scenarios to assess the potential impact of climatic and demographic change on local actor decisions and ecosystem service provisioning. In this role, she regularly communicated with scientists and practitioners from around the world, using datasets from Tibet, Switzerland and Kenya.

Born in Namibia, Jessica draws from fifteen years of work experience, travelling to over 60 countries. She gained her BSocSci (Hons) from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in psychology and environmental and geographical science, and her MSc from the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. She was awarded a scholarship to complete her DPhil at the Biodiversity Institute, Oxford. After conducting research and working with a community-based organization (CBO) to access housing for 164 poor urban dwellers in the City of Cape Town, Jessica worked as coordinator of the Climate Action Partnership of Conservation International. Here, she managed eight conservation programs across South Africa using landscape approaches for climate mitigation and adaptation. She then was selected as a Young Scholar for Humanitarian Aid for the UN International Strategy on Disaster Risk Reduction and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. She worked on urban flooding in Nairobi and Western Kenya. Her PhD took her to South Asia (Terai Plains of Nepal, Central India) and West Africa (Northern Ghana), where she quantified the impact of climate change on ecosystem service provisioning, biodiversity and wellbeing in smallholder farmer agro-ecosystems. As part of this work with the CGIAR Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security, Jessica facilitated national- and community-level governance workshops related to themes of food security, water and soil management. She developed and trialed methodologies for climate adaptation, designed training modules, established women’s cooperatives, early childhood development centers and regional diverse, plausible scenarios. She has similarly conducted research for the Centre for International Forestry Research, Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, Cambridge, London School of Economics, Brown University, University of Cape Town, and the Western Cape Government. Working in the policy-research interface, Jessica sits on advisory boards for CBOs in Kenya, Nepal, Peru and South Africa. She is an elected CSO member of the Global Environmental Facility; has advocated for ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Mexico; is a contributing author to The Economic of Ecosystems and Biodiversity reports, and has managed organic horticultural production and reforestation programs in Peru. Jessica has taught international courses in Global Biodiversity Trade and Indigenous Communities, Field Ecology, Wildland Ecosystems, Urban Geography, Global Challenges for the 21 st Century, and Cities of the South. For this work she has received over 20 awards, fellowships, and grants, including the League of European Research Universities leadership award, Brettschneider (Cornell), Mind the Environmental Gap (Oxford), and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Seal of Excellence (European Commission).

University of St Andrews, School of Geography and Sustainable Development

Experience

  • –present
    Research Associate, University of York