Bruce Goldstein

  • Associate Professor
  • ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
  • ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Bruce Goldstein is an Associate Professor in the  and the  at the 麻豆影院, faculty in the , core faculty in the , and a faculty research associate in the .

How can communities combine forces to adapt to social and ecological challenges and foster transformational change? This is the motivating question for my work. I partner with learning networks, which enable place-based learning and system-wide adaptation to innovate solutions that are both site-specific and applicable network-wide. Learning networks do more than just solve local problems 鈥 they promote fundamental change by encouraging practitioners to engage in reflection and learning by addressing essential questions like, 鈥淲hat is the system in which I live and practice, and how do I want to change it?鈥  

Accomplishing this isn鈥檛 easy, and I am particularly inspired by skilled network facilitators, or 鈥渘etweavers鈥. Netweavers balance network-wide coherence with community autonomy, encouraging communities to experiment with new approaches that suit their circumstances. Netweavers support an open flow of ideas between communities and work to develop collective capacity that can overcome powerful resistance to systems change. To support their amazing work, I manage a learning community of netweavers, the .

My research is qualitative and interpretive, and I apply the principles of participatory action research. I seek to develop close partnerships with the networks I study, engaging netweavers in the research process and providing them with insights from research that can help them achieve their goals. I am particularly interested in partnering with netweavers who are attempting to promote positive change across critical social and ecological thresholds. These include my five primary projects 鈥 the , the , the , the , and the 

Recent Publications

Fazey, I., Sch盲pke, N., Caniglia, G., Patterson, J., Hultman, J., van Mierlo, B., S盲we, F., Wiek, A., Wittmayer, J., Aldunce, P., Al Waer, H., Battacharya, N., Bradbury, H., Carmen, E., Colvin, J., Cvitanovic, C., D鈥橲ouza, M., Gopel, M., Goldstein, M., et al. 2018.  Energy Research & Social Science 405, 4-70.

Yabes, Ruth and Goldstein, Bruce Evan. 2015. . Social Sciences.

Doak, Daniel F., Victoria J. Bakker, Goldstein, Bruce Evan, and Benjamin Hale. 2013. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 29(2): 77-81.

Goldstein, Bruce, Wessells, Anne Taufen, Lejano, Raul P., and William Butler. 2013. . Urban Studies.

Goldstein, Bruce Evan (ed.). Collaborative Resilience: Moving Through Crisis to Opportunity. MIT Press, November 2011. , and .