Gigi Owen

Gigi joined the CLIMAS staff in July 2008. As a qualitative social scientist trained in geography and political ecology, she studies how humans and environments interact. Her current research examines how adaptation strategies help people respond to local climate change impacts. One project explores how Southern Arizona's regional food system adapts to social, economic, and policy shifts. Her most recent work explores collective art-making as a research method to inform local food policy.

Gigi earned her doctorate from the University of Arizona's School of Geography, Development, & Environment. Her dissertation examined successful adaptation initiatives worldwide and evaluated collaborative research methods within the CLIMAS program. She continues to evaluate the CLIMAS program, measuring its impact on building adaptive capacity and resilience in the Southwest. Additionally, Gigi runs the CLIMAS-sponsored Environment & Society Fellowship Program for graduate students.

Gigi has worked on a variety of air, land, and water quality issues across the Arizona-Sonora border region, beginning in 2002 when she moved to Hermosillo, Sonora to study the ecology of desert grasslands and the impacts of invasive buffelgrass. As a CLIMAS graduate student researcher, she investigated public values toward cultural and natural resources in the Lower Colorado River Delta. Gigi then helped coordinate community-based, participatory projects in Ambos Nogales, Sonora and Arizona, connected to air quality and alternative environmental technologies with the University of Arizona's Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology.