Sara Diamond

Sara has spent the last 10 years working with environmental justice and conservation organizations in the US, Peru, and Brazil conducting research to improve conservation, land-use governance, and climate change adaptation strategies. She has worked for organizations such as the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS-Peru), Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental de Amazônia (IPAM), the Amazon Conservation Association (Peru), the Center for Biological Diversity, and Amazon Watch.

She earned her master’s degree in Entomology from the university of California at Davis and is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and The Environment at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a research affiliate of the Rappaport Center for Human Rights and Justice. Her dissertation research examined gendered natural resource use and governance in multi-use conservation areas in the Peruvian Amazon. She is broadly interested in topics related to gender and natural resource use, natural resource governance and policy processes, climate change adaptation, and environmental justice.

Sara is an experienced educator both in formal classroom and alternative settings. As a teacher and facilitator, she strives to make her classes accessible to diverse learning styles and to support student interests and independent learning. She has been teaching at the university level since 2006, and previously worked with Where There be Dragons in 2012. She has additional training in group facilitation, team building, non-violent communication and service learning.  Sara is excited to work with Dragons once again and to explore the socio-environmental history of the Andes and Amazon with the 2019 College Study Abroad cohort!