In Common

This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-four with Sara Meerow. Sara is an assistant professor at the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. Her work focuses on interdisciplinary social-ecological systems, specifically urban geography and planning. Sara talks with Michael about the multiple meanings of “resilience,” and the importance of clarity...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Erin O’Donnell, Early Career Academic Fellow at Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne. Erin is a water law and policy specialist focusing on water markets and governance. She has worked in water resource management since 2002, in both the private and public sectors. Erin is recognized internationally for her research into the groundbreaking new fi...

This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-one with Bridie McGreavy. Bridie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine, Orono. Bridie talks with Michael and special guest Karen Bieluch, a prior colleague of his at Dartmouth College and current colleague of Bridie at the University of Maine, about the importance of indigenous kno...

In this episode Michael speaks with Priya Shyamsundar, lead economist at the Nature Conservancy. Priya speaks about her career trajectory that led her to the Nature Conservancy, and about her current position. They discuss the history of economics and social science at the Nature Conservancy and in Conservation more broadly, and Priya describes the increasing appreciation for the role that humans...

In this episode, Michael and Hita speak with David Bollier. David is an author, activist, blogger and consultant who spends a lot of time exploring the commons as a new paradigm of economics, politics and culture. In 2010, David co-founded the Commons Strategies Group, a consulting project that works to promote the commons internationally. More recently, he became the Director of the Reinventing t...

This is our 100th (full) episode! To celebrate, a group of us from the In Common team got together to do some reflecting, with each participant responding to the same prompt. This asked us to discuss how we got involved in the podcast, some inspiring and challenging moments, something that we're looking forward to doing more of with the podcast in the future, and as an aside, to talk about a recen...

In this episode, Sivee Chawla speaks with Dane Whittaker about their research published in the International Journal of the Commons. They have authored the paper “Social-Ecological Institutional Fit in the volunteer Based organization: A study of the lake management organizations in Vilas County, Wisconsin, USA” with Alise Crippen, Corinne Johnson, and Marco A. Janssen. The episode starts with Dan...

This insight episode comes from full episode sixty-eight, Stefan and Courtney's conversation with Kimberley Peters.   Kimberley is a Professor of Marine Governance at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB), a research organization in collaboration with the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) and University of Oldenburg (UOL), in Germany.    Kimberley talks with Courtney and...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Jesse Ribot, Professor at the School of International Service at American University. Jesse is a human geographer who studies environmental justice and rural wellbeing. They discuss several aspects of Jesse’s research, including his foundational work on the theory of access, which he developed with Nancy Peluso. This theory broadens the traditional framing of e...

In this episode, Hita and Michael speak with Arati Kumar Rao who describes herself as a chronicler of landscapes - of both biodiversity as well as livelihoods using all the storytelling tools she has at her disposal - from photographs to writing to sketching. She is based out of Bengaluru, India.  We speak about her enduring love for literature, writing, photography, and drawing and how that love...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Erik Thulin, Behavioral Science Director at Rare, an NGO dedicated to employing behavioral and social change for the benefit of the environment. Erik was a previous guest on this podcast during one of our episodes associated with a virtual conference of the international association for the study of the commons. Erik talks to Michael about his role at Rare and...

This insight episode comes from full episode sixty, Stefan's conversation with Emily Boyd. Emily is the Director of Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies and Professor in Sustainability Science, as well as a leading social scientist with a background in international development, environment, and climate change. Stefan and Emily talk about the benefits and challenges of an interdiscipl...

In this episode, Dustin and Hita speak with Giulio Boccaletti, a writer, entrepreneur and honorary research associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford. They discuss Giulio’s recent book, Water: a Biography, which he started writing during his former role as Chief Strategy Officer at The Nature Conservancy. In the book, Giulio traces the relationship...

In this episode, Divya speaks with Dr. Ghazala Shahabuddin. Ghazala is an ecologist based in India, where she currently teaches at the Ashoka University and is also working on multiple projects focusing on the ecological and institutional aspects of decentralized forest management, conservation, wildlife policy and politics, and community-based ecotourism.  They talk about Ghazala’s important work...

In this episode Hita and Michael spoke with Dustin Garrick who is an Associate Professor at the School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, Canada and a research fellow at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. We discussed how his passion for rivers led Dustin to move between theory and practice to understand the scope - and limits - of water market...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Mike Albertus, associate professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. They talk about Mike’s most recent book, Property Without Rights: Origins and Consequences of the Property Rights Gap. In the book, Mike is studying the results of agrarian reforms in Latin America, which are designed to redistribute land to rural peasants. Many of these refor...

This insight episode comes from full episode sixty-two, Michael and Stefan's conversation with Henrik Österblom. Henrik is the Science Director of the Stockholm Resilience Center and a Professor at the University of Stockholm in Sweden. In this episode, Henrik talks with Michael and Stefan about his piece in One Earth, “Unsustainable Science,” which thinks about the idea that being busy is equival...

This is the first episode of a new series of the podcast that we are calling "Science and Practice". In this series we will be interviewing guests who conduct applied work on environmental governance and conservation and who often act at the interface of such work and the scientific study of these topics.  In this episode, Michael talks with Nathan Bennett, an Independent Consultant who has worked...

This insight episode comes from full episode 059, Michael's conversation with Brent Loken. Brent is a Global Food Lead Scientist at the World Wildlife Fund. In this episode, Brent talks with Michael about the importance of understanding how the conversion of land to agricultural-based uses and the other major environmental impacts of large-scale agriculture are intimately related to our ability to...

In this episode, Michael and Stefan speak with Dan Brockington, Professor and director of the Sheffield Institute for International Development at the University of Sheffield. They talk to Dan about his important work on protected areas, and in particular two books he has written on the subject: Fortress Conservation: The Preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania, and Nature Unbound: Cons...

In this episode, Michael speaks with one of his intellectual heroes, Dr. Steve Lansing. Steve is an external professor at the  Santa Fe Institute  and the  Vienna Complexity Hub , an emeritus professor of anthropology at the  University of Arizona , and a senior research fellow at the  Stockholm Resilience Centre . Steve and Michael talk about Steve’s work with the Balinese Subak irrigation commun...

This insight episode comes from full episode 052, Michael and Stefan's conversation with Jessica Gephart.    Jessica is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at American University. Her research focuses on feedbacks between globalized food systems and the environment.    In this episode, Jessica talks with Michael and Stefan about how the different ways that seafood catch and commodities...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Kaitlin Cordes, an international lawyer and researcher who focuses on human rights and sustainable development. Most recently, Kaitlin spent eight years developing and leading the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment's work on land, agriculture, food systems, and human rights. Prior to that, she worked at Human Rights Watch and as an Advisor to the UN Spec...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Jean Wiener, the founder and director of the Foundation for the Protection of Marine Biodiversity, or FOPROBIM. Jean and his organization have worked for decades on marine conservation in Haiti, where Jean has played a critical role in helping to establish a group of marine protected areas. In 2015, Jean was awarded the Goldman Environmental prize in recognitio...

In this IJC episode, Frank van Laerhoven has a conversation with Jim Sinner .   Together with Marc Tadaki, Edward Challies, Margaret Kilvington, Paratene Tane, and Christina Robb, Jim co-authored a recent IJC publication entitled Crafting Collective Management Institutions in Messy Real-World Settings: A Call for Action Research . The article deals with how we can give guidance to prospective, or...