Madison Stevens

Biography

Madison Stevens is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (University of British Columbia) supervised by Dr. David Boyd and Dr. Janette Bulkan. Her research focuses on the intersection of human rights and conservation, examining the implementation of rights-based approaches to community-led stewardship of protected areas. For her dissertation research, she employs qualitative ethnographic methods and a political ecology lens to understand the governance dimensions of high mountain community forests in Uttarakhand, India. She is also involved in collaborative projects on the equity dimensions of climate adaptation and the use of evidence in conservation planning, and is keenly interested in working synthetically across diverse ways of knowing and doing. She holds a BA in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies from Franklin University, Switzerland, in 2015, where her research highlighted Indigenous land rights and conflict in Uganda. Her professional background includes a decade of experience working for conservation nonprofit organizations, notably as an Education Media Specialist and Logistics Coordinator with Polar Bears International since 2011. As a Project Assistant for the Canadian Mountain Assessment team, she coordinates and manages a wide variety of activities to support the CMA vision and goals.