The Urban Climate Resilience in Southeast Asia Partnership (UCRSEA) is pleased to welcome Vanessa Lamb as its first postdoctoral researcher.

Dr. Lamb is based at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.

She will support and assist the co-directors to manage the research elements of the Partnership as well as conduct pathbreaking research work of relevance to UCRSEA’s research objectives.

Dr. Lamb has worked and conducted research in Southeast Asia on natural resource access for the past 10 years. She was recently awarded an ASEAN-Canada Junior Fellowship for her continued research on water politics and transboundary environmental governance in Southeast Asia. She completed her dissertation, Ecologies of Rule and Resistance, focused on the politics of ecological knowledge and development of the Salween River at York University’s Department of Geography.

Dr. Lamb research during her fellowship will focus on riverbanks, gardens and their gardeners in Southeast Asia. Using river banks as floodways and urban agricultural space can contribute to food production and security and improved livelihood options.  River bank gardens can also be considered as part of contested riverine landscapes in urbanizing areas as there is a tendency identified in Southeast Asia to reshape river systems by putting concrete flood control and protection infrastructure in areas that are traditionally held as public land.

She is an affiliated researcher with the York Centre for Asian Research, York University in Toronto, Canada and lead principal investigator for a CGIAR WLE Greater Mekong project on water governance titled: Matching policies, institutions and practices of water governance in the Salween-Thanlwin-Nu River Basin: Towards inclusive, informed, and accountable water governance.