Nicole Klenk

Nicole Klenk is an environmental governance scholar who studies the politics of knowledge. Her academic background is in botany and forest ecology. After gaining a BSc and MSc from McGill University, her PhD thesis was awarded 2008 from the University of British Columbia for a study of “The ethics and values underlying the ‘emulation of natural disturbance’ forest management approach in Canada: an interdisciplinary and interpretive study.” Her thesis showed how ethics shapes the interpretations of forests and she advanced a pragmatic approach for adopting a more holistic knowledge approach in forestry science. It was through her PhD that Nicole became interested in the role of science in addressing complex environmental problems such as climate change. Her research subsequently expanded to investigate the role of (environmental) science in society and the ethics, politics and governance of knowledge creation and use. Her work sits in the tradition of political ecology, drawing inspiration from science studies, post-structuralist political theory and early American pragmatism. Nicole has applied her thinking to the areas of forestry, biodiversity conservation and especially climate change adaptation, working in settings across the Americas, from Columbia to the Canadian Arctic. Nicole's research exposes how and why different knowledges get authorised in different contexts, who gets to control such knowledges and how this political dynamic changes over time.