Dan Ferguson

I am an Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Director of the Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) program at the University of Arizona. A qualitative social scientist with interdisciplinary training in human-environment geography and American Indian Studies, I contribute to and lead inter- and transdisciplinary teams that conduct place-based, problem-oriented environmental research. The motivating premise of my work is that societal problems rooted in environmental change are often too complex and multifaceted to be addressed by disciplinary research alone. To overcome this complexity requires developing collective knowledge, built on different kinds of academic and nonacademic expertise, that can be brought together to understand pressing environmental problems and develop workable solutions. The overarching goals of my work are to advance theoretical and practical collaborative environmental change research approaches and to develop new knowledge meant to have real-world outcomes.