Kweku Attafuah-Wadee
kattafua@syr.edu

• Degree Sought: PHD
• Graduate Advisor(s): Moran
• Area of Study: Environmental Science

LinkedIn Profile
Web Link

Graduate Research Topic
What are the relationships between circular economy interventions relating to material substitution and different economic theories in North America? A case study for the manufacturing sectors in the US and Canada.

Favorite Quote - Wilfred Owen
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest, To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est, Pro patria mori.

Sophie Brown
sebrown@syr.edu

• Degree Sought: PHD
• Graduate Advisor(s): Moran
• Area of Study: ESC Environmental and Community Land Planning

Personal Statement
Sophie Brown is a PhD student in the division of Environmental Science at SUNY ESF. She holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Science from SUNY ESF, a Certificate in Environmental Leadership from SUNY ESF, a B.A. in Environmental Communications from Bard College, and a Certificate in Iroquois Linguistics from Syracuse University. She grew up in and resides on unceded Gayogo̱hó:nǫ’ territory near what in English is called Ithaca, New York. Her work as a researcher centers around indigenous language restoration, decolonial studies of place, and forces of language, home, and belonging within landscape.

Research Interests
Linguistic geography; decolonial scholarship; rhetorical sovereignty; counter-mapping; environmental education and curriculum development

Emme Christie
mchris15@syr.edu

• Degree Sought: PHD
• Graduate Advisor(s): Moran and Luzadis
• Area of Study: ESC Human Dimensions of the Environment

Research Interest
My Ph.D. research involves using transdisciplinary approaches for investigating the inclusion of traditional ecological knowledge in the development of natural resources policy. Specifically, I am doing research into the various ways in which law has been used in land dispossession within indigenous communities and how indigenous land ethics result in synergistic symbiotic relationships between indigenous peoples and their land, specifically with water resources. I hope to understand these phenomena by centering place-making narratives and land claims of the Jamaican Maroons in my inquiry. To operationalize the findings of this research, with the integral participation and guidance of the Maroon community, my final goal is to develop frameworks for integrating Maroon ecological/cultural knowledge with empirical knowledge systems to craft more effective, place-based, and culturally relevant policies for natural resources management, that will be just and sustainable for the Jamaican population.

Graduate Research Topic
Collaborative Environmental Management Frameworks

Favorite Quote
The only way to win is to be great and be unaffected.

Home Page
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Foundations of My Scholarship
My interests are centered within the social realm of our existence, with extensions into the ecological realm insofar as it’s necessary to make sense of how our society is arranged, considering various modes of production. Being passionate about equity, inclusion, and justice (EIJ) and being in love with chemistry offers a unique epistemological position that I am also passionate about exploring. How do we bridge the knowledge exchange gaps often resulting from the empiricism of the natural sciences that often excludes much of our population? I often think about this being the reason for the observed stand-off between social sciences and natural sciences in my academic experience. How can we get to the mixing of methods across disciplines, the transdisciplinarity? I think of EIJ as a kaleidoscope, in that it allows us to deconstruct the problems we face and see the plethora of components and rebuild them as crosscutting (individual but connected and interacting) solutions that are just and sustainable. That is really the calling I feel I have received and am leaning into as I work through my scholarship as a Ph.D. student and hopefully in whatever role I assume thereafter.

Mackenzie Gregg
magregg@syr.edu

• Degree Sought: MS
• Graduate Advisor(s): Cousins and Moran
• Area of Study: Environmental Science

Graduate Research Topic
Understanding Challenges to Effective Septic System Maintenance in New York State Watersheds. Conducting research with Dr. Moran for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Division of Water (NYSDEC DOW) to understand community perceptions of 1) septic system management for preserving drinking water quality and 2) available NYS grant programs; specifically the NYS Septic System Replacement Fund Program.

Marie Loeffelholz
maloeffe@syr.edu

• Degree Sought: PHD
• Graduate Advisor(s): Sonnenfeld and Moran
• Area of Study: ESC Environmental and Natural Resources Policy

Doctoral Research Topic
Moving away from a human-only perspective towards an inclusive approach through agency and future-oriented concepts: A critical analysis of human-dominated language and practices in three international river basin organizations

Areas of Competency
Environmental policy; Global environmental governance; Environmental values and collective behavior; Climate change and complex systems

Stacey Mack
samack@syr.edu

• Degree Sought: PHD
• Graduate Advisor(s): Germain and Moran
• Area of Study: FRM Natural Resources Mgt

Graduate Research Topic
Resource challenges associated with hydraulic fracturing

Favorite Quote
"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift."- Steve Prefontaine

Sarah Nahar
senahar@syr.edu

• Degree Sought: PHD
• Graduate Advisor(s): Moran
• Area of Study: Environmental Science

Links
Web Link

Personal Statement
My goal: Together with Dr. Moran, Dr. Phillip P. Arnold at Syracuse University, and administrators at both schools, I am crafting a joint PhD in Religion and Environmental Studies. The aim of this work is to connect, on the deepest levels, the teaching areas and academic conversations between religious studies (as in the study of the way people make meaning, do rituals, repeat practices, tell orienting stories, and participate other collective sociological phenomenon that sustain existential systems) with the places, ecosystems, ecologies, and more-than-human they are in relationship with. The bifurcation of these two areas of study does not exist in much of the lived experience of people around the world, especially Indigenous Peoples. Given that they are about 15% of the world's population and are stewarding 85% of the world's biodiversity there is much to learn from/with Indigenous Peoples, and, I think, much to change about how we study what we study. Some of that relates to how we conceptualize the resources we discard. I focus on excreta (as it can be natural fertilizer when safely reintegrated) but there is much more in the area of discard studies that deserves attention.

Graduate Research Topic
The toilet, both the ritual and the receptacle. It will be an investigation of how worldviews, practices, histories, and orienting stories influence the entrenched use of the freshwater-flush toilet and sewage system, plus decolonial methods of addressing the global sanitation crisis.

Favorite Quote
"There is no one I can't learn something from." - Brazilian liberation theologian Ivone Gebara

Sam Nyamekye
sknyamek@syr.edu

• Degree Sought: PHD
• Graduate Advisor(s): Moran
• Area of Study: Environmental Science

Prajapati Shapkota
pshapkot@syr.edu

• Degree Sought: PHD
• Graduate Advisor(s): Moran
• Area of Study: ESC Environmental and Natural Resources Policy

Personal Statement
I hope to understand the process of environmental adaptation and integration of resettled refugees from a developing country and thus generate new knowledge on the subject. My special focus is on my own community - the Bhutanese-Nepali (Bhupali) refugees resettled in the US since March 2008.

Favorite Quote
"A bundle of belongings is not the only thing a refugee brings to his new country" ..... Dr. Albert Einstein (Dr. Einstein is the greatest physicist of the 20th century, Nobel Laureate and one of the 5 refugees who changed the world)