Professor Ann Dale, Principal Investigator, held her university's first Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Community Development at Royal Roads University, School of Environment and Sustainability from 2004-2014. A former Trudeau Fellow Alumna (2004), she is a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Science, chairs the Canadian Consortium for Sustainable Development Research (CCSDR), a Board Member of the World Fisheries Trust. and the founder of the National Environmental Treasure (the NET). Current research interests include governance, social capital and agency, biodiversity conservation, place-based and virtual sustainable communities. She is a recipient of the 2001 Policy Research Initiative Award for Outstanding Contribution to Public Policy for her book, At the edge: sustainable development in the 21st century. Professor Dale is actively experimenting with research dissemination and social media, and has recently launched HEADTalks.
Research Team Page
Research Team
What We Are Our research is dedicated to building civic literacy and useful knowledge for integrated decision-making around critical public policy issues, particularly, sustainable community development. We believe we have enough information, we know enough to act now and environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity conservation affect all life. We are also committed to timely research dissemination, sharing our intellectual capital on the ground, and to creating novel e-communities of commitment, passion and excellence around sustainable community development.
Who We Are We have recruited a highly interdisciplinary team committed to the timely dissemination of research and ideally knowledge, and offer tools to enhance the decision-making capability of individuals and communities for their sustainable future development.
The team’s principal investigator is Ann Dale, Trudeau Fellow Alumna (2004), Canada Research Chair, Professor, School of Environment and Sustainability, Royal Roads University.
Rebecca Foon is an urban planner dedicated to integrating a holistic understanding of sustainability in growing healthy communities. She is an accomplished organizer and facilitator, sustainability management systems creator, sustainability assessment leader, and green building consultant. She has extensively researched water-related enviromental issues in North America and India in partnerhsip with the Indian Institute of Management. More recently, she worked as a sustainability/creative consultant for Planet Green's urban environment television series Wa$ted (Discovery Channel), and is the LEED coordingator for Proment Development's new residential development project targeting LEED gold in Montreal, Canada.
Rob Newell is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Environment and Sustainability at Royal Roads University. He completed a PhD in Geography at the University of Victoria, where he researched the potential immersive have for supporting coastal management objectives. Rob works on developing creative and interactive ways of using digital media and online communications to disseminate sustainability research ideas, engage stakeholders and the public in sustainability, and facilitate knowledge sharing and collaborative strategies for sustainable development.He has a keen interest in exploring the elusive intersection between data analysis and communicating interpretations of analyses to broad, diverse audiences.
Chris Strashok holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Calgary and a master’s degree in Environment and Management from Royal Roads University. He is a CRC research associate and an associate Royal Roads University faculty member, teaching the Systems Methods for Environmental Management in the Masters for Environment and Management program. He has a background in computer modeling and simulation, sustainable community development, chemical engineering, and systems theory. He has put his modeling experience to practice when working with whatIf? Technologies developing computer-based simulation models for long-term strategic planning and scenario analysis.
Emily Huddart Kennedy is an Assistant Professor of environmental sociology at the Washington State University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Natural Resource Conservation from the University of British Columbia, a master’s degree in Environmental Sociology from thr University of New Brunswick, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Sociology from the University of Alberta. Her interests are in how civil society engages with the natural world and environmental issues. This line of inquiry includes individual, household behaviours; lifestyle choices such as downshifting; and public sphere actions including relational activism. She has used a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods and participant samples at municipal, provincial, and national scales, publishing findings in Human Ecology, Rural Sociology, Environmental Politics, the Canadian Journal of Sociology, and others.