International Researchers

Prof. Dr. Li An
Associate Professor, Geography
San Diego State University, USA

Dr. An is a Professor of Geography at San Diego State University (i.e., California State University at San Diego). His research focuses on better envisioning, understanding, and planning of complex human-environment systems (CHES).

Prof. Dr. William G. Axinn
Director
Survey Research Center, University of Michigan (UM), USA


Professor
Population Studies Center, University of Michigan (UM), USA

Dr. Axinn studies the relationships among social change, family organization, intergenerational relationships, marriage, cohabitation and fertility in the United States and Nepal. His research also includes the development of new methods for collecting social science data. His teaching centers on the family, the life course, fertility and research methods.

Dr. Michael N. Bates
Adjunct Professor
School of Public Health, USA

His research interests have always been diverse, but with a particular focus on defining the relationships between environmental and occupational chemical exposures and health effects. They include investigation of the possible health effects of long-term exposure to hydrogen sulfide gas, Investigation of the health effects of household air pollution from fuels used for cooking, heating and lighting in developing countries, Study of possible health effects of solvent use by motor vehicle mechanics, Study of the possible health effects of dental amalgam fillings, Cancer risks in firefighters, Health effects of low level exposures to arsenic in drinking water.

Prof. Dr. Jennifer Glick
Professor
School of Social and Family Dynamics
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University, USA

Dr. Glick is a social demographer who focuses primarily on migration and family processes. Her work has been directed at the intersection of migration and the family life course and the extent to which migration alters educational and labor force trajectories and influences the timing and patterns of family formation. She is also interested in the importance of migration for intergenerational relationships and living arrangements.

Prof. Dr. Sharon J. Hall
Director
Environmental Life Sciences, Arizona State University, USA


Senior Sustainability Scientist
Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability
Dr. Sharon J. Hall is an ecosystem scientist who explores the ecology of native and managed ecosystems that sustain people and other organisms within the community of life. To achieve these goals, Professor Hall and her research team focus on understanding the ecological feedbacks between humans and the environment.

Prof. Dr. Sarah R. Hayford
Associate professor
Arizona State University, USA

Dr. Hayford studies family formation and reproductive health, primarily in the United States and sub-Saharan Africa. She is interested in knowing how people make plans about these behaviors and who is able to carry out these plans. Currently she is studying the impact of parental migration on children's socioemotional development, educational outcomes, and family formation behaviors in Mexico, Mozambique, and Nepal.

Dr. Chloe Inskip
Consultant Conservation Scientist
Chester Zoo, Uk

Prof. Dr. Jianguo (Jack) Liu
Professor, Fisheries & Wildlife
University Of Michigan (UM), USA

Prof. Dr. Liu is a human-environment scientist and sustainability scholar. He holds the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability, is University Distinguished Professor of fisheries and wildlife at Michigan State University and serves as director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability.

Prof. Dr. Emily McKendry Smith
Assistant Professor
University of West Georgia, USA

Prof. Dr. Emily McKendry Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of West Georgia. Her research centers on interconnections between religion and family, the ways individuals use religion to define their identities, and the meanings they attach to place.

Dr. Sean T. Murphy
Regional Director
CABI, UK

Dr. Murphy's expertise lies in invasive insect and weed biocontrol and integrated pest management (IPM). He works on biological control and IPM programmes (pre and post harvest) on a range of crops in tropcial areas. He has produced expert documents for international conventions and invited experts on international convention working groups (IPCC and CBD).

Dr. Sarah Brauner Otto
Associate Professor
McGill University, Canada

Dr. Brauner Otto is a social demographer studying global family change with a focus on the relationship between social context (e.g. schools, community organizations) and demographic behaviors over the life course. She is particularly interested in which dimensions of social context (e.g. characteristics of schools or health services) matter the most and how context influences the individual.

Prof. Dr. Lisa D. Pearce
Assistant Professor
Mississippi State University, USA

Dr. Pearce is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on religious and family dynamics (especially relationships between the two) from adolescence through the transition to adulthood. She has ongoing research in the United States, Nepal, and Kenya. Pearce’s work often mixes survey and semi-structured interview methods, and she writes and teaches about mixed methods research.

Prof. Dr. Rebecca L. Thornton
Associate Professor
Department of Economics, University of Illinois, USA

Dr. Thornton's research focuses on issues related to health and education in developing countries and has involved field-experiments in Africa and South Asia. Current work includes examining how learning HIV results affect savings and investment behavior, measuring how financial incentives to stay HIV negative affect sexual behavior, and examining how menstruation affects education and labor force participation.

Prof. Dr. Arland Thornton
Research Professor
Population Studies Center, University Of Michigan (UM), USA


Research Professor
Survey Research Center, University Of Michigan (UM), USA
Prof. Dr. Thornton specializes in the study of marriage, family, and life course structures and processes. His work currently focuses on intergenerational relations, cohabitation, marriage, divorce, reproductive behavior, living arrangements, and gender roles in Nepal, Taiwan, and the United States. A major program explores developmental idealism as a set of ideas that have shaped important aspects of social and family life. His teaching centers on the sociology and demography of the family and life course.

Dr. Alexandra Zimmermann
Head of Conservation Science, Senior Research Associate
WildCRU University of Oxford, UK

Dr. Zimmermann specialises in human-wildlife conflict and socio-cultural aspects of wildlife conservation and development. She is director of Conservation Science at Chester Zoo and is an expert on the role of zoos in conservation. She also researches cases in which humans and endangered species come into conflict, for instance jaguars preying on cattle, or crocodiles attacking people. She studies the underlying social, cultural and political drivers of conflict, and develops strategies for mediation.

Prof. Dr. Nathalie Williams
Associate Professor
University of Washington, USA

Prof. Dr. William's research primarily focuses on migration patterns, during periods of armed conflict, natural disasters and climate change, and social change in general. Her work seeks to develop theoretical and empirical understandings of why some people migrate and many do not. Incorporating all these demographic patterns during periods of disasters, Williams is now using agent-based models to investigate the macro-level population trends that can result from these micro-level behavioral changes during the recent armed conflict in Nepal and during climatic disasters in Northeast Thailand.

Prof. Dr. Natalie Wilkens
Assistant Professor
Arizona State University, USA

Dr. Natalie Wilkens is an Assistant Professor in ASU's T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics. She is a consulting editor for Developmental Psychology. Dr. Wilkens researches children's socio-emotional adjustment, and her research is funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Her research provides insight into child, social, and cultural factors that shape children’s and adolescents' social, school, and psychological adjustment internationally. Her methodological interests involve latent variable modeling of longitudinal data.

Prof. Dr. Scott T. Yabiku
Professor of Sociology and Demography
Pennsylvania State University, USA

Although initially trained as a sociologist and demographer, Dr. Yabiku's research is characterized by diverse collaborations across disciplines. This interdisciplinary research on how human and natural systems affect each other spans the social and natural sciences. His research is also international in scope with data collections or field work in the United States, Mexico, Mozambique, China, and Nepal. To support his research, he uses tools to develop apps and conduct statistical analysis.

Prof. Dr. Abigail York
Senior Sustainability Scientist
Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University,USA

Prof. Dr. York investigates how, when, why, and who is able to manage neighborhoods, cities, forests, water resources, biodiversity hotpots, and agricultural lands sustainably. York deploys diverse methods including econometrics, social network analysis, spatial analysis, surveys, content analysis, and fieldwork; results from this work are integrated into decision-making models, agent-based models, and scenarios.