Our Editors

Patricia (Patty) Balvanera is a professor at the Institute for Ecosystems and Sustainability Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She was trained in biology, ethnobotany and ecology. Within large inter- and trans-disciplinary teams and research networks, she explores the role of biodiversity in contributing to human well-being and analyzes the dynamics of social ecological systems, with emphasis on the values that underpin the drivers of such dynamics. At the local scale, she monitors the dynamics of managed diverse tropical systems, and co-develops more sustainable food systems through transdisciplinary processes designed by creatives around the kitchen. At the global scale, she develops conceptual frameworks and monitoring strategies, performs cross-site syntheses, and delivers assessments at the science-policy interface. She has co-led several inter- and trans-disciplinary initiatives such as the Scientific Committee of the Programme for Ecosystem Change and Society (one of the core Projects of Future Earth), the Ecosystem Services group of the Global Earth Observation Biodiversity Observation Network (GEOBON), the Mexican Network on Social Ecological Systems and Sustainability, and the Values Assessment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Katrina (Kate) Brown is Professor Emerita of Social Sciences at the University of Exeter in UK. Her pioneering interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work focuses on individual and society capacities for adaptation and transformation, emphasising resilience as co-produced and co-constructed though social relations. Her PhD examined women’s collective action in drought-prone Kenya, and she has worked with communities and collaborators around the world on environmental change and social justice. She was granted an inaugural ‘Axa Outlook’ award for her project ‘You, Me and Our Resilience’ to work with creative practitioners and communities to develop actions to build resilience to climate change. Her book, Resilience, Development and Global Change presents a re-visioning of resilience for development. She holds an honorary doctorate from Wageningen University, Netherlands, for ‘outstanding contributions to environmental social science, in the fields of political ecology, conservation and resilience’. She is Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences and was identified as one of the most influential cross-disciplinary and social scientists in the 2020 and 2021 Highly Cited Researchers lists. As Professor Emerita, she describes herself as a ‘feral social scientist’ and currently works on environmental change, inequality and resilience, and as an advisor to international scientific organisations and programs.

Craig R. Allen is the Director of the Center for Resilience in Agricultural Working Landscapes and Professor in the School of Natural Resources, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He retired as Leader of the USGS Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in 2018. He is a member of the Board of the Resilience Alliance, and is an elected lifetime Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), for contributions to resilience theory and practice. His work focuses on the development of both theory and practice, and has focused on quantifying resilience, developing resilience based concepts such as panarchy, discontinuities, spatial regimes, and more. His work often addresses the role of invasions, extinctions and landscape change on social-ecological resilience. More recently, Dr. Allen has begun to address questions of resilience in working landscapes. He has published >250 articles and 5 books, with Applied Panarchy (with L. Gunderson and A. Garmestani) published in 2022. He has served as a science advisor for the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the USGS Powell Center and NSF Science and Technology centers. His interest in resilience began during his Ph.D. work at the University of Florida, under the guidance of CS Holling. Dr. Allen also completed a post-doc with Holling in Zoology at the University of Florida.