The Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry
YALE FOREST FORUM LEADERSHIP SEMINAR
Speaker Biographies -- Spring 2009
Marsh Hall Rotunda, 360 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut
April 16 , 2009
Diane Russell
Biodiversity and Social Science Specialist at the US Agency for International Development
Diane Russell is Biodiversity and Social Science Specialist at the US Agency for International Development where she manages and designs projects and runs a seminar series.
She has a PhD in anthropology from Boston University and Masters in environmental management from Yale F&ES. She carried out PhD and post-doc research in the Congo Basin and over the last twenty years has worked in international development, conservation and agricultural research in Africa, Asia and the Pacific.
She served as a social scientist with the Biodiversity Conservation Network (BCN) in Asia-Pacific and was co-leader of the Trees & Markets Programme at the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi. Diane has been a board member of the Anthropology and Environment section of the American Anthropological Association and the Social Science Working Group of the Society for Conservation Biology. Her key publication (with C. Harshbarger) is "Groundwork for community-based conservation: Strategies for social research." She seeks to improve the flow of information and ideas among academics, conservation and development practitioners and donors in the interest of crafting integrated and rights-based approaches to conservation and forest management.
Her paper, with P. Mbile and N. Tchamou, Farm and forest in Central Africa: Toward an integrated rural development strategy, is recently published in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry.
