university in 2007. His research and teaching interests include rural development, sociology of agriculture, environmental politics, social impact assessment, and international development. Dr. Parkins leads a national project on energy transition in Canada, with a focus on energy literacy, values, culture and landscapes.
Michael Granzow is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology
at the University of Alberta. Michael uses interdisciplinary approaches from sociology, cultural studies and human geography to study cities and urban change. His current research looks at emerging geographies of urban agriculture in the Global North. Michael is also the managing editor of Curb Magazine, a nationally distributed publication focusing on issues shaping cities, regions and rural areas.
Robert J. Summers, PhD founded the Urban and Regional Planning undergraduate program at the University of Alberta and is currently a Researcher in that program. He is interested in the institutions which influence the development of retail commercial areas that contribute to community vitality and resilience in communities of all sizes.
Lars Hallstrom, PhD is the Director of the Alberta Centre for
Sustainable Rural Communities and an award-winning professor in 2 departments (Social Science – Augustana and Resource Economics & Environmental Sociology - ALES) at the University of Alberta. Dr. Hallstrom’s work focuses on comparative and environmental public policy, and particularly on the intersection of politics, science and public policy. He has been the recipient of over 85 research and knowledge mobilization grants, and has published widely on issues of rural development, rural governance, municipal and local policymaking, environmental policy, natural resource management and civic activism. As a core member of the Network for Ecosystems Sustainability (NESH), he has worked with researchers and watersheds from across Canada on issues of ecohealth assessment, theories of integration to guide intersectoral action in public policy, and linking public health to water and watershed management. He is particularly interested in the design and evaluation of multi-level programs and interventions to support adaptation and resilience in complex system such as rural communities, and in the role for public and expert knowledge in driving innovation in post-normal conditions of high risk and high uncertainty. Most recently, he is the lead editor of two newly published books – Ecosystems, Society and Health: Pathways through Diversity, Convergence and Integration with McGill-Queens University Press (2015) and Sustainability Planning and Collaboration in Rural Canada with the University of Alberta Press (2016).
About the authors
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