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Mountain Research Initiative’s new director

25.01.2017

The Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) has appointed a new director. Dr Carolina Adler will take office in May 2017. With Carolina Adler, the MRI has chosen a director with outstanding achievements in the field of public policy, winning the Harold D. Lasswell prize for policy research in mountain regions, among others.

Adler is currently working as a Research Fellow at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) in the Environmental Philosophy Group and Transdisciplinarity Lab, both at the Department of Environmental Systems Science. She earned her PhD at Monash University (Australia), focusing on climate impacts, values, vulnerability and adaptation using policy sciences. The significance of her work to policy applications was demonstrated by an invitation to join the Society for Policy Scientists in the United States of America, in which she was recently voted into its Executive Council.

A geographer and environmental scientist by training, Adler’s pragmatic research interests and activities centre on problems of policy relevance, focusing on the effects and challenges of global change in society. Her current research collaborations and consulting activities address climate change adaptation, vulnerability and resilience, the use of scientific evidence in policy, and co-production of knowledge. Other interests include: the role of public opinion in shaping policy processes; adaptive governance; decision-making under uncertainty; systemic reviews, assessments and evaluations; adventure tourism and recreation in mountain regions; and inter- transdisciplinary collaborations.

Adler has been a member of the MRI since her PhD years between 2007-2010, actively participating at various events within the European and Latin American networks, as well as contributing to the more recent MRI project on Assessing Sustainable Mountain Development. She also brings many relevant networks and existing collaborations to her role as MRI Director, including Future Earth, the International Social Science Council and the International Council for Science, among others. Other relevant connections to practice and the public and private sectors, includes her work as current President of the Mountain Protection Commission of the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA), also based in Bern, Switzerland.

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Photo (top): FAO/Thomas Hofer