Dr Adam Hejnowicz is a newly appointed Lecturer in Climate Change Adaptation in the Global Change Research Institute within the School of GeoSciences at Edinburgh University, a Visiting Researcher in the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of York, and a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Values Assessment. With almost 15 years of experience working at the intersection of environment, development and sustainability issues, Adam has undertaken research in the UK, Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, and has worked and studied at the Universities of Keele (BSc), Oxford (MSc), York (MRes, PhD, Postdoc), Sheffield (Postdoc) and Newcastle (Postdoc).
An interdisciplinary sustainability scientist, his applied, policy-facing, and transdisciplinary research concerns the sustainability and governance of complex social-ecological systems. His work draws on mixed methods and plural epistemologies. In his most recent research position, as a Research Associate in the School of Engineering at Newcastle University, Adam’s work has focused on examining the intersection between climate change adaptation, community livelihoods and human-nature relations, alongside matters of policy and governance, in the Indian Sundarbans and the Red River Delta in Vietnam as part of the GCRF Living Deltas Hub. Other recent international field work includes investigating the linkages between peri-urban resilience and climate migration, and the impacts of COVID-19 on informal settlement communities in Namibia, Kenya and Tanzania. His broader portfolio of research interests includes work on new economic approaches, water-energy-food nexus, and ecosystem services and market-based mechanisms for natural resources management.
Through his association with CECAN, Adam has been involved in post-Brexit UK environmental and agricultural policy, the role of evaluation in transformational change and exploring the importance of organizational cultures in managing complexity. Part of this work has also involved the development of systems-based tools for improving public policy evaluation, which has led to contributions to CECAN’s involvement with Defra in the development of the Complexity Evaluation Framework and the Theory of Change Toolkit, as well as the development of the Pluralistic Evaluation Framework.
All throughout, Adam’s approach is highly participatory, and has involved engaging with local, regional, and national government agencies, departments and ministries; community-based organizations; local, national and international NGOs as well as multilateral donors and intergovernmental organizations. Adam has recently joined the Editorial Board of the journal Humanities & Social Sciences Communications and also serves as a Review Editor for the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science.
