Myanna Lahsen
Sustainability
Researcher
Biographical Summary
Cultural anthropologist and science and technology studies scholar by training, I use mixed methods to study knowledge politics and socio-cultural dynamics bearing on science, development, global environmental change and sustainability transformations, primarily in the United States and Brazil, as well as international institutions.
I am Senior Associate (“Titular”) Researcher in the Earth System Science Center of the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE) in Brazil. I have held research positions, lectureships, and professorships at Harvard University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Colorado in the United States, Wageningen University in the Netherlands, and at Linköping University in Sweden, where I remain Affiliated Researcher.
I am adviser to Nature Climate Change and Environmental Research Letters, executive editor of Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, and founding, former executive editor of the Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge subdomain of WIREs: Climate Change.
I have held numerous organizational and intellectual leadership roles in high-level efforts to shape research agendas capable of responding to sustainability challenges. This subsumes organization and scientific leadership of major international meetings, including, among others, an IPCC co-sponsored workshop to define research priorities to help low- and middle-income countries address climate vulnerability and adaptation needs (see scientific outcome); Future Earth’s Young Scientist Network Conference on Integrated Science; and an effort led by Future Earth to harness digital technologies to transformations towards sustainability.
I have also served on international panels assessing governance options for geoengineering (solar radiation management), as well as design of science-policy interfaces and envirgonmental assessments, advising the U.S. National Science Foundation and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, among others.
Education
Rice University, Cultural Anthropology. PhD, 1998.
University of Michigan, Anthropology & English Literature. Bachelor of Arts, 1990. Honors.
Lycée Paul Cezanne. French High School Degree (Baccalauréat), Aix-en-Provence, France. Honors (“Mention Bien”).
For awards, click here.
Employment
Senior Associate Full Researcher
(Pesquisadora Titular III)
(2009 – present)
Center for Earth System Science, Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE), Brazil
Associate Professor
(2021-2023)
TEMA – Environmental Change
Linköping University, Sweden
Associate Professor
(2017 – 2020)
Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
Research Scientist
(2002 – 2020)
Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, the University of Colorado, USA.
Social Science Officer and Co-Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Regional (IGBP) Brazil Office; Social Science Advisor to the IGBP’s first Scientific Chair from the Global South. Brazilian Institute for Space Research, INPE, Brazil, 2007-2009.
Lecturer on Environmental Science and Public Policy
(2001-2002)
Environmental Science and Public Policy Program, Harvard University, USA.
Postdoctoral Fellow
(2000-2002)
Global Environmental Assessment Project,
J.F. Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University.
Myanna Lahsen 