ENP welcomes new Junior Research Assistant Tracey O'Connor

Tracey will assist with ENP courses and support ENP group activities, while developing and seeking funding for her PhD proposal, which focuses on governance of sustainable agriculture initiatives.

Tracey is interested in complex social-ecological interactions, distributive justice, institutional arrangements, and ownership. Agriculture, as a social activity intrinsically linked with welfare, natural resources, and the environment, is where she finds the perfect meeting of her academic as well as personal interests.  The responses to food security and climate change challenges in agriculture are of particular interest to Tracey, specifically sustainable intensification and climate-smart agriculture initiatives. 

Prior to this position, Tracey obtained a Bachelor in Agri-Environmental Science at University College Dublin, Ireland, with an emphasis on soil science, ecology, and molecular biology. Seeking more knowledge of environmental policy, she pursued a Master of Environmental Science at Wageningen University, during which she was selected for the SENSE Honours programme. Her focus during her MSc. was on genetically modified crop management and the implications of different policy tools, such as property rights, for management outcomes. Now she hopes to expand her research capacity and deepen her knowledge of agri-environmental governance, through her work as Junior Research Assistant.