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Memorial University Jennifer Nicole Brenton Doctoral Candidate (WP7) Pierrette Janes (she/her) is a Master’s of Science in Geography student at Memorial University’s campus in St. John’s, NL, and is co-supervised by Dr. Carissa Brown and Dr. Joel Finnis. Pierrette is from the beautiful, nature-filled province of New Brunswick where she spent most of her childhood exploring local forests. After completing her Bachelor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Leadership from the University of New Brunswick, Pierrette’s interest in forests led her to a position as Stewardship Coordinator for the Nature Trust of New Brunswick, working closely with local conservationists to protect, monitor and restore some of New Brunswick’s unique natural spaces. Pierrette’s research with FOCI will focus on climate smart trees and urban forests as a potential nature-based climate solutions in coastal communities in Newfoundland.

Memorial University Robert Ndum Research Assistant (WP8) Robert Ndum is a Graduate student in the Faculty of Medicine under the Division of Community Health and Humanities, Memorial University of Newfoundland. Robert completed his Undergraduate in Physiology in Nigeria and is distinctly among the first generation Bachelor’s degree holders in his family. Upon completion of his Undergraduate, Robert spent about 2 years working as Lab assistant in a Hospital setting. While engaged as Lab assistant, Robert realized so many gaps and lacuna at organizational levels and in the workplace; and the need for a safe and healthy working environment, and was driven towards Public health systems and policies that support work safety and work-related injury. This drive Robert shares was further informed after he lost his Uncle who was an Oncologist to Cancer. Robert research interests are in the areas of Organizational Health and Safety; Implementation of Public health systems and Policies; and Cancer. Robert works as Research Assistant under Dr Kim Cullen in the SafetyNet Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Research and is currently conducting research on “Return to Work after work injury or illness: Challenges for the Marine and Coastal workers in Atlantic Canada”. Through this research Robert is passionate in conducting comprehensive literature reviews; preparing research reports, manuscripts and publications and in the long-run towards actively addressing key challenges for marine and coastal workers in Atlantic Canada particularly access to Health-care and Insurance.

Paul Foley Co-Principal Investigator Paul Foley is an Associate Professor at the Environmental Policy Institute in the School of Science and the Environment at Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Grenfell Campus, which is situated in traditional Mi’kmaw territory in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. He received a PhD in Political Science from York University in Toronto in 2012 after receiving an MA in International Development from Dalhousie University and a BA (Honours) in History from Memorial University. His research is primarily situated in critical social science fields of political economy and political ecology and developed through interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations, with much of his work focusing on policies and governance for oceans, fisheries, seafood and coastal communities. His work has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) through the Ocean Frontier Institute (OFI).

Memorial University Ismael Golmohammadi Postdoctoral Fellow (WP7) Ismael is a researcher at Memorial University, specializing in Corporate Strategy and Sustainability. His research focuses on how institutional actors shape environmental sustainability and climate governance. He has received several academic accolades, including the Best Paper Award from the Administrative Science Association of Canada (ASAC), the Bank of Montreal’s scholarship for academic excellence, Mitacs Accelerate fellowship, Memorial doctoral fellowship, and the Dr. R. Sexty Scholarship for Social Responsibility in 2020. His research has been presented at leading academic conferences and published in high-ranked management journals.

D'Arcy Wilson Co-investigator (IWP4) D'Arcy Wilson is an Atlantic Canadian interdisciplinary artist based in Corner Brook, NL, where she is Associate Professor in Interdisciplinary Studio at Memorial University of Newfoundland's Grenfell Campus. Her work laments past and ongoing colonial interactions with the natural world, from her perspective as a descendent of European settlers in Canada. D’Arcy Wilson has exhibited her work across the country, most recently at the Alberta Art Gallery, the Rooms Art Gallery, Dalhousie University Art Gallery, and the Owens Art Gallery as well as M:ST, Flotilla, and Connexion ARC, the Bonavista Biennale, and more. D'Arcy has an MFA from the University of Calgary and a BFA from Mount Allison University. She has been three times longlisted for the Sobey Art Award (2018, 2019, and 2020), and was shortlisted to represent Atlantic Canada in 2019. She has been twice shortlisted for the Visual Arts NL “Excellence in Visual Arts” Awards (the Milestone Award in 2017 and 2021). D'Arcy has participated in artist residencies across Canada, most recently at the Banff Centre (Outdoor School), Struts Gallery (Sackville, NB), and the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture in Dawson City (KIAC). Her work is included in collections such as the Confederation Centre for the Arts, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and the Rooms Art Gallery, and her work will be featured in the upcoming North Atlantic Triennial to be held at the Portland Museum of Art (Maine), the Reykjavic Art Museum, and Bildmuseet (Umeå, Sweden) between 2022 and 2023. Website: www.darcywilson.org

Carissa Brown Co-investigator (WP2) Dr. Carissa Brown is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Memorial University and has 18 years experience conducting experimental and observational studies in Canadian forest ecosystems. C. Brown is the lead of the Northern EDGE Lab, where her research group focuses on the impact of climate change on plant species across their distributions. She does this primarily in forest ecosystems, studying both understory plant and tree populations and communities, typically at the edge of their range. She combines field experimentation and observational studies to answer questions related to biodiversity and land-use change, disturbance, abiotic characteristics, and biotic interactions, analyzing these data using tools such as mixed-effect modeling, Bayesian approaches, and multivariate statistics. Her ongoing research programs include a large-scale field experiment distributed across Newfoundland testing the ability of native temperate tree species of eastern North America to expand their distributions into boreal forest stands under climate change. Previous research in Canada’s subarctic treeline has involved propagating and planting out tree seedlings across a natural field experiment. Her research funding and collaborations span Federal (NSERC, Parks Canada), Provincial (Research and Development Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador), and international (International Arctic Science Committee) bodies. She has published 21 peer-reviewed scientific articles in journals ranging from Canadian Journal of Forest Research to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. C. Brown’s research has been featured in the journals Nature and Science, and she has been a guest on regional CBC radio programs as well as the national science program ‘Quirks and Quarks’.

Grenfell Campus, Memorial University Sara Langer-Smith Research Assistant (WP7) To learn more about Sara Langer - Rural Resilience

Memorial University Yousra Abdelhady Master's Student (WP1) Yousra is pursuing another master’s degree in Ocean and Naval Architecture Engineering at Memorial University. Her thesis focuses on the Safety of Fishing Vessels, specifically on the effect of length to breadth ratio on dynamic stability. She is a Naval Architect with over a decade of international experience in the shipbuilding industry. She has worked in Canada, Netherlands, and Egypt, covering various aspects of naval architecture, project management, production, and modelling. Her top competencies are multitasking, ship stability and weight distribution. She holds a bachelor and master’s degrees in Naval Architecture from Alexandria University in Egypt, as well as a PMP certification and a train of trainer credential. She is also a Techwomen fellow, and a registered Professional Engineer in British Columbia and Alberta. Besides her technical expertise, she is also an active volunteer for SNAME, serving as an Alternate Functional Vice President for Knowledge management and the social media and Events Chair for SNAME Canadian Atlantic Section. She is also part of the communication team of Maritech conference 2024. Moreover, she has mentored and facilitated various hands-on workshops for different age groups.

Memorial University Pierrette Janes-Bourque Master's Student (WP2) Pierrette Janes (she/her) is a Master’s of Science in Geography student at Memorial University’s campus in St. John’s, NL, and is co-supervised by Dr. Carissa Brown and Dr. Joel Finnis. Pierrette is from the beautiful, nature-filled province of New Brunswick where she spent most of her childhood exploring local forests. After completing her Bachelor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Leadership from the University of New Brunswick, Pierrette’s interest in forests led her to a position as Stewardship Coordinator for the Nature Trust of New Brunswick, working closely with local conservationists to protect, monitor and restore some of New Brunswick’s unique natural spaces. Pierrette’s research with FOCI will focus on climate smart trees and urban forests as a potential nature-based climate solutions in coastal communities in Newfoundland.

Doug Smith Co-investigator (IWP1) Assistant Professor Doug Smith of Memorial University’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied. Science researches complex socio-technical systems. He has developed an approach called the process monitoring and performance measurement (PMPM) method for investigating these systems. The PMPM method provides insights into the how complex systems function by modeling the interactions between people, organizations, and technologies. Smith is an investigator in IWP1.

Madeleine Gustavsson Collaborator (WP9) Dr Madeleine Gustavsson is a Researcher at Ruralis – Institute for Rural and Regional Research in Trondheim, Norway. Before joining Ruralis, she was a Research Fellow at the University of Exeter (UK), holding an Economic and Social Research Council New Investigator fellowship, researching the changing lives of women in small-scale fishing families in the UK and Newfoundland. As part of the Women in Fisheries project, Madeleine visited Memorial University in 2018 as a visiting postdoctoral fellow where she also got to learn about the Newfoundland fishery and collect data with women in Newfoundland fishing families. Previous to this, Madeleine conducted research on fishing cultures – including intergenerational and gendered dimension – in North Wales, UK which led here to secure PhD in Human Geography at the University of Liverpool. In addition to publishing on the topics of fisheries, gender and Blue Justice, Madeleine has co-edited the book ‘Researching People and the Sea’ published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2021. More broadly, her research focuses on marine, coastal and rural issues drawing on social science methods to understand the lifeworlds of people living and working with the sea. Dr Gustavsson will collaborate with the lead and postdoctoral fellow of FOCI’s Work package 9.3.

Randolph Peters Collaborator (IWP4) Randolph Peters is an internationally recognized composer who works in a wide range of art forms and music media. As well as many symphonic, choral and chamber music works, he has composed for opera, theatre and dance, and has created more than 100 film and television scores for feature, documentary and animated productions. Peters’ compositions have been presented around the world by such as artists as percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, the Kronos and the Penderecki String Quartets, and conductors Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Marin Alsop, and Bramwell Tovey. His work includes commissions from the Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Calgary, Québec, Manitoba Chamber, and Edmonton Symphony Orchestras, the Hannaford Street Silver Band, and the Elmer Iseler Singers, among others. His operas include Nosferatu, commissioned by the Canadian Opera Company; Inanna, set to an original libretto by Margaret Atwood; and The Golden Ass, with an original libretto by Robertson Davies, premiered by the COC in 1999.