Zana Mody

I'm an interdisciplinary socio-ecologist, program manager, and science communicator working at the intersections of the climate crisis, communities, and coastal ecosystems. As a citizen of both Canada and India, I speak multiple languages and have lived and worked in several remote communities in the Global South, including conducting immersive field-based research in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, India and Ghana.

In my role as a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of British Columbia in the Resources, Environment, and Sustainability department, I research blue carbon crediting programs and how communities can better mitigate and adapt to climate change by protecting and restoring coastal ecosystems such as mangroves. My Ph.D. is supervised by Dr. Simon Donner in the Climate and Coastal Ecosystems Lab and the Mangrove Lab with Dr. Dan Friess. I hold a M.A. in Anthropology and a B.Sc. in Biology and Environmental Science from Trent University, where I focused on the intersections of climate policy, ecosystem sciences, and community-based conservation. As a Liu Scholar and a Public Scholar at UBC, I aim to connect the outcomes of my research on tangible and publicly oriented policy and development initiatives.

My previous work experiences included working as producer and journalist at CBC Radio in Toronto, and as the manager and developer of the Ocean Pathways program with the conservation non-profit Ocean Wise in Vancouver. Through my academic and professional experiences, I've honed a skillset in qualitative methods including conducting interviews, cross-cultural communication, literature analysis, grounded observations, and comparative case studies.

August 2024