Dr. Rod Dobell has been an Associate of the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance since 2002, and is the Academic and Policy Advisor to both the POLIS Water Sustainability Project and the Biocultural Ethics initiative.
His recent work has focused on regional oceans governance, and coastal and marine spatial planning through the Centre for Global Studies, the Centre for Co-operative and Community-Based Economy, and the POLIS Project at the University of Victoria.
Rod has a PhD in economics from MIT and taught economic theory at Harvard for five years before returning to Canada as Professor of Political Economy at the University of Toronto. Subsequently, he alternated academic work with executive appointments at the Government of Canada, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and as President of the Institute for Research in Public Policy. He returned to the University of Victoria to take up the Francis G. Winspear Chair for Research in Public Policy, and is now a Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and Senior Research Associate at the University of Victoria’s Centre for Global Studies.
From 2001-2005, Rod was Principle Investigator and co-chair of a major research and community engagement initiative in the Clayoquot Sound region called the Clayoquot Alliance for Research, Education and Training. This was a partnership of the University of Victoria and the communities of the Clayoquot Sound region, through the Clayoquot Biosphere Trust as a conduit. The partnership was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under its Community-University Research Alliance program. Some of activities included: studies on sustainable resource management, creation of learning materials for Nuu-chah-nulth language training, extension of the Clayoquot archives for community access and use, expansion of the Long Beach Model Forest Society’s sustainable forestry research inventory and database to include human and ecosystem health, and a major project to develop consensus on protocols and guidelines for community-based research with local community groups and the central region Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations.
