Liette Vasseur

Dr. Vasseur is a full professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Brock University where she is also a member of the Women and Gender Studies program and the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, one of the five transdisciplinary spaces at the university. Since 2014, she holds the UNESCO Chair on Community Sustainability: from Local to Global at Brock. She currently leads the thematic group on Climate Change Adaptation of the Commission for Ecosystem Management of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Her research program is highly interdisciplinary and links issues such as community-based ecosystem management, climate change adaptation and resilience and sustainable agriculture and rural communities. In Canada it includes impacts of extreme events on meadow ecosystems and ecosystem/landscape sustainable development and resilience in Niagara rural communities. Her community-research work on climate change adaptation with the City of Greater Sudbury led her to receive in 2011 the Latornell Pioneers Award from Conservation Ontario. She was part of the codirection committee of a large project on Coastal Communities Challenges in the face of Climate Change, funded by the Social and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which looked at resilience and ecosystem-based adaptations in ten coastal communities of Atlantic Canada. She has produced over hundred publications and more than 200 presentations as a researcher. Her work focuses not only on Canada but also internationally such as in China, where she is a Minjiang Scholar at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University. She is also involved in Ecuador on climate change adaptation and resilience (Paramos) as well as sustainable agriculture development (San Juan) in Ecuador with ESPOCH in Riobamba. Previously she worked in Burkina Faso on community-based conservation management. As the topic of women has also been a point of focus in her international research, she is involved in some women organizations. She is currently the President of the Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades and Technology (CCWESTT) and the President-Elect of the International Network of Women Engineers and Scientists (INWES).