Gund Fellow, Asim Zia, is keeping busy during his sabatical. 

“From the Habit of Control to Institutional Enablement: Re-envisioning the Governance of Social-Ecological Systems from the Perspective of Complexity Sciences” was published in Complexity, Governance and Networks, and looks at how generalized autocatalytic set theory can be used as a bottom-up, emergent and co-evolutionary framework to design the governance regimes of Social Ecological Systems.  The research suggests that this approach can move policy-makers to create systems that are socially desirable yet ecologically feasible.  Published with Gund Fellow, Chris Koliba, and collaborators: Stuart Kauffman, Brian Beckage, Gabor Vattay, and Arne Bomblies. 

The second paper, “Spatial discounting, place attachment, and environmental concern: Toward an ambit-based theory of sense of place,” was published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology and co-authored with: Bryan Norton, Sara Metcalf, Paul Hirsch, and Bruce Hannon.  Their research suggests that by introducing “ambit” - similar to a home range concept in animals - we can integrate subjective and objective measures to better model people’s sense of place. This development can be useful when developing regional plans and when conducting environmental policy analysis. 

Congratulations to Asim and both of the teams!