Lise Sedrez teaches Latin American History at California State Long Beach. She holds a M.S. in Environmental Policy Studies, from New Jersey Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in History from Stanford University. Lise’s research interests include environmental history of Latin America, urban history, history of science and history of Brazil. Her dissertation studies the role of the state in the transformation of Guanabara Bay, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the twentieth century, and the interplay of people, nature and political institutions in the ever-changing Brazilian capital. Before her graduate studies, Lise worked for environmental non-profit organizations in Brazil, such as Greenpeace, IBASE and WWF- and she still keeps up-to-date with her environmental activism. She is currently serving on the Scientific Board of the Sociedad Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Historia Ambiental
Christian Brannstrom’s research focuses on nature-Society relations, in particular the historical geography of the environment and resource management in Brazil and Latin America. He also has a keen interest in environmental history and has edited a recent volume Territories, Commodities and Knowledges: Latin American Environmental History in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Institute for the Study of the Americas, London). In addition, Dr, Brannstrom is interested in changes in natural resource regimes, particularly the decentralization of policies for water resources, and the impacts of agricultural land uses on the environment in Brazil, particularly western Bahia. An ongoing project, “New Environmental Governance in Brazil”, developed by Dr. Brannstrom, analyzed types of governance regimes, evaluates the influence of state actors and civil society on water governance, and measures environmental outcomes of new governance regimes.