People
A community of researchers
IECS brings together faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, visiting scholars, and professional staff committed to understanding the social, cultural, political, and historical dimensions of environmental change.
Director
Staff
Postdoctoral Fellows
Valerie Uher
Postdoctoral Fellow · (2027–2029)
Valerie Uher is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the IECS and the Department of Human Geography at UTSC.
Julian Prieto
Postdoctoral Fellow · (2026–2027)
Julian Prieto, PhD, is a political scientist exploring the geopolitics of scientific collaboration, focusing on science diplomacy, scientific diasporas, and research security, with climate change and biodiversity as central interests.
Hannah Tollefson
Postdoctoral Fellow · (2024–2029)
Hannah Tollefson's work is at the intersection of environmental, media, and infrastructure studies.
Isaac Thornley
Postdoctoral Fellow · (2024–2027)
Isaac Thornley is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Human Geography at UTSC, researching environmental conflict related to Canada's emerging electric vehicle battery supply chain, drawing on political ecology and energy humanities approaches.
Student Fellows
Diogo Santos
Graduate Fellow · (2026–Present)
Diogo Santos de Jesus is a Master's candidate in Mechatronics from the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Brazil.
Lila Sparks
IECS Researcher · (2026–Present)
Lila Sparks is a climate justice organizer in her third year, double majoring in Peace, Conflict, and Justice and International Relations.
Marc Mariner Cortés
IECS Researcher · (2026–Present)
Marc Mariner-Cortés is a PhD student in Human Geography at the University of Toronto.
Zachary Gan
Graduate Fellow · (2025–Present)
Zachary Gan is a master's student in Human Geography at U of T. His research looks at the infrastructural politics of Canada's green transition and how resource nationalism has shaped Canada's imagination of the "green transition."
Chengxiang Lin
Graduate Fellow · (2026)
Chengxiang Lin is a Ph.D. candidate in Asian Studies at Cornell University.
Isidora Cortés-Monroy
Doctoral Fellow · (2024–2026)
Isidora Cortés-Monroy is a PhD candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, focusing on representations of mining in Chilean and Bolivian cultural productions.
Celeste Gutierrez
IECS Researcher · (2025–2026)
Celeste Gutierrez is an IECS Researcher supporting the expansion of the Climate Backtracker across multiple provinces in Canada.
Kanchan Kargwal
IECS Researcher · (2025–2026)
Kanchan Kargwal is a Graduate Researcher supporting the development of the Climate Backtracker.
Gayathri Siva
IECS Researcher · (2024–2026)
Gayathri Siva is a fourth-year undergraduate student at UTSC, pursuing a Major in City Studies.
Tatiana Rios
IECS Researcher · (2024–2025)
Tatiana Rios is a U of T graduate with an Honours BA in History, focusing on culture, discourse, race, and class in 20th-century American history.
Riya Osti
IECS Researcher · (2023–2026)
Riya Osti is an international scholar from Nepal doing a double major in International Development and Political Science.
IECS Researchers
Caleb Wellum
Affiliated Researcher
Caleb Wellum is a historian working at the intersection of energy, culture, and political economy in the twentieth century.
Hande Paker
Affiliated Researcher
Hande Paker is a political sociologist who works on politics of climate and the environment, civil society, state, cosmopolitan citizenship, and political ecology.
Max Karpinski
Affiliated Researcher
Max Karpinski researches experimental environmental aesthetics, with a focus on contemporary poetry and sound on Turtle Island.
Sarandha Jain
Affiliated Researcher
Sarandha Jain is a socio-cultural and political anthropologist who completed her Ph.D. at Columbia University in 2022.
Tara Howse
Affiliated Researcher
Tara Howse is a social scientist and policy advisor specializing in intersectional impact assessment and resource governance.
Zeynep Kadirbeyoglu
Affiliated Researcher
Zeynep Kadirbeyoglu is a political scientist with interests in political ecology, decentralization, local government, civil society organizations, and citizenship.
Visiting Professors
Andrew Baldwin
Visiting Professor · Fall 2026
Professor Baldwin joined the Geography Department at Durham in 2009.
Araceli Clavijo
Visiting Scholar · Fall 2026
Araceli Clavijo is a biologist with a Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering and Risk Prevention from the University of Granada (Spain) and a PhD in Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina).
Dominique Routhier
Visiting Professor · Fall 2025
Dominique Routhier is an assistant professor at Roskilde University, Denmark.
Shaomin Zheng
Visiting Professor · January-September 2025
Shaomin Zheng is a visiting professor at the Centre for Comparative Literature, U of T, specializing in slow narrative strategies, material ecological thought, and cross-cultural intellectual exchange.
Alevgul Sorman
Visiting Professor · Fall 2024; Spring/Summer 2025
Alevgul Sorman is an Ikerbasque Research Associate at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3).
IECS Invited Professors
Laleh Khalili
IECS Invited Professor · Winter 2027
Looking ahead, Winter 2027 programming will feature a lecture by Laleh Khalili, with additional events and visiting scholars to be announced.
Timothy Mitchell
IECS Invited Professor · Fall 2026
Timothy Mitchell is a political theorist specializing in the modern Arab world, the history of energy, and political economy of capitalism.
Thea Riofrancos
IECS Invited Professor · Winter 2026
Thea Riofrancos is Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College.
Andreas Malm
IECS Invited Professor · Fall 2025
Andreas Malm gave a public lecture on Friday, October 10, 2025, hosted by the IECS at the University of Toronto Scarborough, titled ““Return of the Repressed Heat: Towards a Freudo-Marxist Theory of Geoengineering.”
Matt Huber
IECS Invited Professor · Winter 2025
Matt Huber is a professor of geography at Syracuse University and the author of Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital (U of Minnesota P) and Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet (Verso).
Myles Lennon
IECS Invited Professor · Winter 2025
Myles Lennon is Dean’s Assistant Professor of Environment and Society and Anthropology at Brown University and a former sustainable energy policy practitioner.
John Vaillant
IECS Invited Professor · Fall 2024
Author John Vaillant delivered a lecture titled "Communicating Fire" on Thursday, September 26, 2024, for the launch of Communicating Climate After Climate Denialism, a 3-part series by the Institute for Environment, Conservation & Sustainability (IECS), featuring award-winning author John Vaillant (The Golden Spruce, The Tiger).
Research
Explore IECS research and initiatives.
Learn about research programs, public initiatives, and opportunities connected to the Institute.