GECHS

Maureen Woodrow is currently Executive Director of the Ocean Management Research Network, network of social scientists who focus on issues related to ocean and coastal management. At the same time she continues to work with Mike Brklacich on climate change in rural resource based communities in Canada and funding was awarded in June 2007 for further research in this area. She is a sociologist whose research includes vulnerability in rural and coastal communities. She has carried out projects at the community level in Canada from Northern Alberta, Eastern Ontario, Northern Ontario, Newfoundland, and Labrador, as well as in the Yucatan in Mexico. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Laval University with a graduate degree from University of Louvain, Belgium and an undergraduate from Memorial University of Newfoundland. She speaks English, French and Spanish. Maureen acted as Executive Officer at the International Project Office of the Global Environmental Change and Human Security Project when it was based at Carleton University from August 2002 to October 2005. At the same time she and her husband launched a wholesale and Internet e-commerce artisan business (Stages and Stores, Inc.) combining it with a heritage foundation (Stages and Stores Heritage Foundation, Inc.) in the small island community of Change Islands off the Northeast coast of Newfoundland with the dual objective to create much needed employment and to preserve and promote the unique fishing heritage buildings of in an isolated picturesque Newfoundland fishing community. The combined experience as GECHS Executive Officer and the work in a small vulnerable community increased her understanding of vulnerability in coastal communities and loss of human security as a result of the moratorium on Northern cod, the keystone species of the coastal communities in that region. She held an international workshop within the community in collaboration with the Centre for Coastal Studies at Simon Fraser University on Vulnerability in Coastal Communities, Adaptation to Change and Planning for the Future. She actively collaborates with LOICZ on the human dimensions of coastal vulnerability.