My job as an interdisciplinary social scientist is to listen to understand how others see and make sense of the world. This means I draw from multiple social science disciplines (social psychology, behavioral science, and behavior change) to study what influences our behaviors and decision-making.
I am very excited to apply my social science toolkit to help "solve" real-world conservation and environmental challenges. Despite my background as an educator, I must warn you that I rarely believe that "raising awareness" will lead your target audience to take the action you desire. My job, as I see it, is to help to better understand different groups of people (including your target audience), to identify barriers and motivations, and to come up with ways to test the impacts of your approach. |
Trust and distrust in marine protected area management
For my Ph. D., I will be examining the relationship between trust and distrust in the context of marine protected areas. I will also examine how feelings about, impacts from, and support or opposition to marine area management interact with trust and distrust in other stakeholders. Currently, my study examines Oregon marine reserves and aims to interview fishermen (commercial, charter, and recreational), scientists, environmental organization staff and members, and/or managing agency staff.
Ocean Acidification Curriculum
Ocean acidification is an area of active scientific research that receives limited public discourse or media coverage. For my master's thesis (Marine Resource Management), I created a four-lesson high school curriculum module that built upon existing, freely available educational resources. The curriculum was used in an experiment that tested the effects of teaching students about solutions to ocean acidification. The curriculum is freely available for teachers to use.
Brian's work was featured on Oregon State's Marine Studies Initiative website and the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences' "Graduate Student Voices" spotlight.