Danika Kleiber is a recent PhD graduate from the University of British Columbia Fisheries Ce
ntre. Her primary research interests lie in the intersection of gender and small-scale fisheries, and she has worked in the Philippines, Palau, and Bangladesh.
This is what she told us about her current work and research interests:
What are you currently working on within the context of SSF?
DK: My postdoctoral fellowship is focused on the collaborative creation of a transdisciplinary fisheries curriculum. I’ll be working with TBTI members representing diverse geographic and disciplinary backgrounds to create a course and other teaching materials that can be used to build capacity for small-scale fisheries governance. In my spare time I’m also working on research related to gender and governance of marine protected areas in the Philippines, sea cucumber fisheries in Palau, and a quirky paper exploring the words we use to describe people that fish.
How does gender research in fisheries relate to your current work with TBTI?
DK: I was really excited to work at MUN because much of the earlier academic work on gender and fisheries started in Newfoundland. Gender is an important factor in the understanding and analysis of fisheries systems including ecological, economic, governance, and rights systems and their interactions. Transdisciplinary approaches to fisheries are conducive to engaging with gender issues precisely because gender analysis cannot (and should not) be limited to any one disciplinary approach to fisheries. Transdisciplinarity also engages with how research can transform the system that it is working in. This approach is very familiar to feminist and gender researchers where attention to transformation is often an explicit part of the research process.
