Opening Keynote—Tuesday, October 6
Dr. Carlie D. Trott
Carlie D. Trott, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cincinnati, where she directs the Just Climate Futures Lab and advises doctoral students in the Community and Organizational Research for Action (CORA) Ph.D. program. A social psychologist by training and community psychologist in practice, Dr. Trott’s climate justice research aims to bring visibility to, and work against the inequitable impacts of climate change, socially and geographically. Core themes in her research include youth- and community-led climate action, ecopolitical psychology, and the psychosocial dimensions of societal transformation.
Beginning with her doctoral research funded by the NOAA Planet Stewards Education Project a decade ago, a central focus in her work has been climate and environmental education—particularly how participatory, action-oriented, and justice-driven approaches can cultivate learners' critical awareness, collective agency, political imagination, and locally meaningful action. Dr. Trott's work centers the knowledge, experiences, and actions of people most affected by environmental injustice and the climate crisis, and often uses community-engaged, arts-based, and action-oriented research methods. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Dr. Trott's research has been published in the journals Environmental Education Research, npj Climate Action, Energy Research & Social Science, Sustainability Science, Science Education, Local Environment, and Action Research. She is also co-editor of Community, Psychology, and Climate Justice (Springer Nature, 2025), an international collection that brings together critical, decolonial, and community-based perspectives on collective action and transformative responses to the climate crisis.
Research Closing Plenary—Wednesday, October 7
Engaging People in Educational Processes that Foster Environmentally Valuable Outcomes
Panelists:
Bill Finnegan
Dr. William Finnegan is the Sustainability Education and Research Manager at the University of Oxford and the Head of Programmes in Lifelong Learning in Social Sciences at Oxford Lifelong Learning. Bill leads the Vice-Chancellor’s Colloquium on Climate, an extra-curricular interdisciplinary skills programme for Oxford undergraduates. He is also a co-investigator of the Education and Training for the Climate project at the Oxford Department of Education and creator of the Museum of Climate Hope experience in Oxford’s gardens, libraries, and museums. Bill co-founded Tamarack Media, writes for The Conversation, and has produced short films for BBC Ideas.
Dr. Lauren Madden
Dr. Lauren Madden is a Professor of Elementary Science Education at The College of New Jersey, where she also coordinates programming in Environmental Sustainability Education. Her research has been supported by grants from the New Jersey SeaGrant Consortium, National Science Foundation, and US Environmental Protection Agency. She has written more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on science and environmental education. Her current work focuses directly on climate change education; she was the lead author on the New Jersey School Boards’ Association & Sustainable Jersey For Schools’ Report on K–12 Climate Change Education Needs in New Jersey. Her most recent book, Climate Change Education Across Disciplines K–12: New Jersey and Beyond, shares advice and recommendations from 42 author-experts in an edited volume, due came out in February 2025. Dr. Madden’s expertise has been featured prominently in many media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, NPR, and the Star Ledger.
Dr. Nicole Ardoin
Nicole Ardoin is an associate professor of Environmental Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University. She was Stanford's lead researcher on the eeWORKS initiative in partnership with NAAEE. Professor Ardoin´s research focuses on environmental behavior as influenced by environmental learning and motivated by place-based connections. In particular, she is interested in considerations of geographic scale, which is an understudied yet crucial aspect of people-place relationships in a rapidly globalizing, urbanizing world. Professor Ardoin and members of her Social Ecology Lab work in collaboration with informal organizations, including museums, zoos/aquariums, parks, and residential environmental education programs, with an emphasis on using innovative, non-traditional metrics and adaptive management approaches. She is also interested in philanthropic support of environmental learning initiatives and emergent trends in the field of environmental education research.
Dr. Alan Reid
Alan Reid is a Professor in the Faculty of Education, Monash University. He leads its Education, Environment and Sustainability Faculty Research Group. Until 2012, he worked at the Centre for Research in Education and the Environment, University of Bath, and is active in a range of environmental education research activities and networks, primarily in Europe, North America and Australasia.
Alan’s research interests focus on teachers’ thinking and practice in environmental education, and traditions, capacities and issues in environmental education theory, research and practice. His research students are strongly encouraged to consider what is necessary and sufficient as environmental education research, including who claims the power to construct and fix a debate about environmental education within particular boundaries of discussion or inquiry.
Applications of this work include editing the 4 volume reference work series, Environmental Education (Routledge Major Works), entries to the Oxford Bibliography on Environmental Education, and working as editor-in-chief of Environmental Education Research.
Dr. Martha Monroe
Having co-authored 12 books and manuals (including three for NAAEE); published 33 book chapters, 80 peer-reviewed journal articles, and 198 extension fact sheets; and served on 160 graduate student committees in her 20 years at the University of Florida, Dr. Martha Monroe is a prolific leader and contributor for catalyzing environmental education research. Her accomplishments working at the nexus of EE research and practice are as diverse as they are numerous, blending expertise in program evaluation, learning, professional development, and behavior change to help build capacity and empower people to participate in addressing environmental issues.
Dr. Heidi Ballard
Heidi Ballard is Professor of Environmental Science Education and Founder and Faculty Director of the Center for Community and Citizen Science (CCS) in the School of Education at University of California, Davis. Her work focuses on what and how adults and youth learn through community science, citizen science and other forms of public participation in scientific research working toward environmental stewardship and action. She works in varied contexts, from natural history museums to Uganda farmer field schools to carceral settings, using primarily qualitative research methods in partnership with teachers, environmental educators, research scientists, and community-based organizations. She conducts professional development trainings for teachers, environmental educators in using CCS to support learning and action, and graduate students and researchers in participatory action research methods.