Transitions towards Sustainability - 26 February - 1 March 2019
Professor Pamela Matson, Stanford University, Tellus Mater Distinguished Fellow in Sustainability Studies 2019
We were delighted to welcome Professor Pamela Matson to Cambridge to take part in a week of lectures, seminars, events meetings and even a BBC interview from Tuesday 26th February to Friday 1 March. The full list of events can be found here
Please take the time to watch watch Pamela's lecture The Practical Pursuit of Sustainability held on Tuesday 26th February. A truly fascinating talk where Pamela drew common threads amongst the different uses of Sustainability, and illustrated how systems thinking and a capital assets framework can be used to increase the likelihood of accomplishing sustainability goals.
Other activities included the following:
Wednesday 27th February - Linking Knowledge to Action at Scales that Matter: Lessons from the past, thoughts about the future
Pamela discussed some crucial characteristics of research that effectively links “science to action,” and practices for extending solutions to scales that matter. Please watch the video of this seminar here
Thursday 28th February - Discussion with UCCRI on Interdisciplinary research
- Leadership Seminar with MPhil Conservation Leadership
Friday 1st March- Final Symposium: Panel Discussion
This final symposium discussed Professor Matson’s work and issues raised in the the week. This was Chaired by Professor Bhaskar Vira and Guest Commentators included Dr Rachel Carmenta: (Geography, Plant Sciences and Zoology, UCCRI), Professor Jennifer Howard-Grenville (Judge Business School), Professor Adina Merenlender (Berkeley), Dr Andrew Tanentzap: (Plant Science, UCCRI)
The Tellus Mater Distinguished Fellowship is managed by the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute (UCCRI) in cooperation with the Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Trust.
The Distinguished Fellowship is generously hosted by the Master and Fellows of St John’s College.
Biography
PAMELA MATSON is an interdisciplinary sustainability scientist, academic leader, and organizational strategist. She served as dean of Stanford University’s School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences from 2002-2017, building interdisciplinary departments and educational programs focused on resources, environment and sustainability, as well as co-leading university-wide interdisciplinary initiatives. In her current role as the Goldman Professor of Environmental Studies and Senior Fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment, she leads the graduate program on Sustainability Science and Practice. Her research addresses a range of environment and sustainability issues, including sustainability of agricultural systems, vulnerability and resilience of particular people and places to climate change, and characteristics of science that can contribute to sustainability transitions at scale.
Matson serves as chair of the board of the World Wildlife Fund-US, and on the boards of the World Wildlife Fund - International, ClimateWorks Foundation, California Academy of Sciences, and several university advisory boards. She served on the US National Academy of Science Board on Sustainable Development and co-wrote the National Research Council’s volume Our Common Journey: A transtion toward sustainability (1999); she also led the NRC committee on America’s Climate Choices: Advancing the Science of Climate Change. She was the founding chair of the National Academies Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability, and founding editor for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources. She is a past President of the Ecological Society of America, and a past vice-chair of the science steering committee of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. Her recent publications (among around 200) include Seeds of Sustainability: Lessons from the Birthplace of the Green Revolution (2012) and Pursuing Sustainability (2016).
Dr. Matson is an elected member of the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a AAAS Fellow. She received a MacArthur Foundation Award and contributed to the award of the Nobel Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, among other awards and recognitions.
The Tellus Mater Distinguished Fellow in Sustainability Studies has been made possible by the generous support of the Tellus Mater Foundation. The Fellowship is managed by the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute (UCCRI) in cooperation with the Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Trust.
The Tellus Mater Distinguished Fellowship, follows the earlier Humanitas Chair in Sustainability Studies which was created in 2013. Over its six year duration, the programme has included a diverse range of topics relating to sustainability studies, ranging from the environment and behaviour, to policy and economics.
The WEIDENFELD-HOFFMANN TRUST is an educational charity set up by the late Lord Weidenfeld and its chairman André Hoffmann. The Trust provides around thirty graduate scholarships a year for young people from developing and emerging economies to study at Oxford and participate in a specially created Leadership Programme which gives them the tools to return to their countries and make a difference in whichever sphere they can. The Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Trust is the largest philanthropic scholarship supported by Oxford University. Since 2007, 239 scholars from 66 countries have benefited from this programme. For more information please visit: www.whtrust.org/scholarships/ and follow on twitter and instagram.
