Principal Investigator

Megan is a conservation social scientist based at Oregon State University, where she is jointly an Assistant Professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences and an Assistant Unit Leader in the U.S. Geological Survey Oregon Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. Her work focuses on how to bridge the gap between conservation practice and social science theory, so that science can support the protection of nature and people, and practice can support the most useful science.

Megan’s research is on the effect of communication (outreach, messaging, engagement, etc.) on actions people take to promote conservation in the systems they are embedded in. This includes behaviors at individual, social, and organizational levels, such as why and how people form collective initiatives, encourage behavioral diffusion across social networks, or lead organizational change. Megan has worked on an array of projects including gender equity, human-wildlife conflict, native plant gardening, plant-based eating, and conflict management. She brings together social psychology, which seeks to understand how social influence and social interaction shape individuals, with a focus on power dynamics to ensure her work centers the needs and ideas of people who have been excluded.

Megan is also a trained facilitator. She work with scientific teams and conservation agencies and organizations to help design, run, and study collaborative processes that help teams come together, set shared goals, work towards those goals, and navigate difficulties that emerge along the way.

PhD Student

Aakash is a social scientist with a broad training in ecology, anthropology, and political ecology. He joined the HD Lab in January 2022, and will be examining the effectiveness of conservation interventions focused on enabling behavior change, and in particular studying messaging approaches to reducing human-bear conflict.

Aakash graduated with an MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Oregon in 2018, where his thesis examined rural agro-pastoralist perceptions to livestock predators in a trans-Himalayan region in Northern Nepal. His work experiences include various research positions at universities in the US and international NGOs in Nepal, along with stints as a journalist, a tour operator, and most recently, a project manager helping run citizen science urban heat mapping campaigns. He brings a mixed methods approach to the projects he works on, and enjoys working with diverse stakeholders in diverse settings. Outside of research, Aakash is a big basketball fan, and an aspiring photographer who enjoys spending his time in the outdoors - check out some of his work at aakashupraity.com.

PhD Student

Samara is an interdisciplinary social scientist with the Human Dimensions Lab at Oregon State University. Samara’s focus, the human relationship to water, furthers our understanding on how these relationships with water are formed by individuals and communities, how place-based attachment inspires conservation behaviors, and how education modalities can further our connection and motivation to protect environments we love.

Samara’s love of storytelling as a means of learning and teaching is inspired by the river guiding communities she’s worked with across California, Utah, Arizona, and Oregon. She devoted her thesis at Hampshire College to studying river guide narratives of the river. As a skilled facilitator invested in making landscapes come alive through interpretation, she directed education programs for guiding companies and taught place-based curriculum to students on rafting trips. She now records and produces water related podcasts through her business, Reading Water. When she’s not podcasting, researching, listening, and facilitating, you will find Samara packrafting Oregon’s rivers, mountain biking local trails, and keeping her ear out for the next story.

Masters Student

Felice is coming from Houston, Texas to pursue a MS in Wildlife Science. She entered the HD Lab in Fall 2023. As a developing social scientist, she will be exploring the interplay between how racially- marginalized professionals self-identify within long- established conservation institutions and how organizations narrativize and represent their lived experiences. Her thesis work is supported by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Pacific Region. Additional research interests include: diversity, identity/intersectionality, organizational history and culture.

Professional Science Masters Student

Abigail is an online student from Illinois pursuing a Professional Science Master's in Fish and Wildlife Administration. She has a substantial background in wildlife rehabilitation and animal care at several accredited facilities in the Chicagoland area- Willowbrook Wildlife Center, Shedd Aquarium, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Abigail graduated from Elmhurst University with a bachelor's degree in psychology with a double minor in biology and communications.

Postdoctoral Scholar

Brian is a conservation social scientist based at Oregon State University. He is a postdoctoral scholar supervised by Dr. Megan Jones in the Human Dimensions lab in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences. His research focuses on applying social and behavioral science to conservation practice to support human wellbeing and environmental sustainability. His prior work included an examination of trust, distrust, and emotions related to Oregon’s marine reserve system and development of a high school ocean acidification curriculum. Brian’s three current projects seek to (1) segment fishing communities based on their perceptions of fish hatcheries, (2) understand how to support private landowner-beaver coexistence, and (3) refine a series of training modules on the science behind successful interdisciplinary team science.

His training includes a B.A. in Biology from Lewis & Clark College, an M.S. in Teaching Secondary Biology from Fordham University, an M.S. in Marine Resource Management from Oregon State University, and a Ph.D. in Fisheries (Social) Science from Oregon State University. He has a highly varied professional background with an emphasis on education (formal and informal) and research (social and biological).

Postdoctoral Scholar

Jessica is a conservation social scientist who is a current postdoctoral scholar at the HD Lab. She is interested in how theoretical and methodological insights from social science can inform conservation policy and advocacy. Her work at the HD Lab focuses on the social-psychological factors that predict relational organizing around plant-based diets. Her broad areas of interest include the impacts of wildlife tourism on conservation, social change related to animal consumption, and the legal and illegal wildlife trades.

Her research has examined such topics as: substitutes for endangered species in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the link between wildlife tourism and wildlife consumption, the effects of COVID-19 on support for wildlife bans in China, the impacts of wildlife farming on the social acceptability of wildlife products, and complex post-traumatic stress disorder in Asian elephants.

Jessica earned a joint PhD in Sociology and Environmental Science and Policy from Michigan State University, with specializations in Animal Studies and Conservation Criminology. She also holds a Master of Arts in Psychology and a Bachelor of Science in Human Development from Northwestern University. In addition, she is trained in trans-species psychology, or the application of psychological science across species. She is a member of the working group on illegal wildlife trade and human-felid conflict at the International Conservation Network at the University of Oxford and an editorial board member of the Journal of Ecotourism.

Masters Student (2022-2024)

Jennifer is an interdisciplinary-trained marine conservation scientist who completed her M.S. in Fisheries Science in the lab in 2024 and earned her B.S. in Marine Biology from UC Santa Cruz in 2022. Her work bridges marine ecology and human behavior, focusing on developing dynamic, actionable strategies for marine resource management with an emphasis on collaborating directly with resource managers and users.

Postdoctoral Scholar (2022-2023)

Laura is a conservation social scientist with a focus on pro-environmental behaviour change. She works closely with governments and NGOs to enact change through her research.

Her research broadly lies in these areas:
- The spread of low/no meat diets
- Impact evaluation of conservation interventions
- Effective environmental narratives and imagery
- Mobilisation of climate activists
- Demand reduction in the wildlife trade

In her role within the HD Lab Laura worked on an NSF-funded grant led by Dr. Jones studying relational organising for climate behaviours. Specifically, can messaging tailored to specific social psychological drivers encourage people to talk to their friends and family about eating more plant-based diets? In her spare time Laura is also an active collaborator with Extinction Rebellion UK, investigating ways to mobilise people in collective climate action. Laura now works as a social scientist for the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Learn more about her research on Google Scholar and connect with her on Twitter.