Lindsay K. Campbell

My current research explores the dynamics of civic stewardship, environmental governance, and sustainability policymaking--with a particular emphasis on issues of social and environmental justice. Here are a few examples of my projects:

STEW-MAP (the Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project) is a longitudinal assessment that analyzes the organizational capacity, spatial locations, and networked relationships of thousands of civic stewardship groups. The methodology and approach began in New York City and has been replicated in a 15+ different domestic and international locations, including Chicago, Baltimore, Seattle, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Juan, PR, and Paris, as part of a collaborative network of researchers and practitioners interested in understanding and supporting stewardship.

The Living Memorials Project examined September 11 as a disturbance to which people respond, including through acts of stewardship. We continued this research longitudinally to understand how community-based stewardship persists and changes over time. This project led to the Landscapes of Resilience project and the FS edited volume Green Readiness, Response, and Recovery: A Collaborative Synthesis.

City of Forests, City of Farms explores how the politics and practices of urban forestry and urban agriculture in New York City are negotiated. It centers on the municipal long term sustainability plan, PlaNYC2030. From this entry point, it analyzes the network of actors, institutions, discourses, and socio-natural environments that constitute urban forestry and urban agriculture. It asks: what actors via what institutions make what claims in order to shape the goals that are set within the plan? What accounts for the varied treatment of urban forestry and agriculture in a single city within a single sustainability planning process? How do the goals of the plan alter resource management practices going forward? This book was published in 2017 by Cornell University Press.

I am a founding member of the New York City Urban Field Station, which was jointly created by the Forest Service Northern Research Station and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The Urban Field Station develops and applies adaptive management and science to improve human well-being and the environment in urban metropolitan areas. I develop a number of applied projects at the interface of research and practice for the Urban Field Station on issues ranging from urban forestry planning and management, to ecological literacy, to green jobs. I participate in coalitions and efforts such as the MillionTreesNYC campaign and the Forest for All Coalition.  I create transdisciplinary spaces of collaboration between land managers, scientists, artists, and other practitioners. In partnership with The Nature of Cities, I created and co-lead our Urban Field Station Collaborative Arts Program.

My research aims to reveal how urban social-ecological systems are structured and function in order to support human well-being and environmental quality. I use social science methods to understand the dynamic relationships between people and nature, particularly in urban context--but with applications across urban-to-rural gradients--to enable more effective and equitable natural resource management. I use co-production and transdisciplinary approaches to engage "many ways of knowing" and to develop more inclusive approaches to knowledge development.