Staff
Director
Dawn Bazely
Dawn Rose Ann Bazely is Associate Professor in Biology at York University and Director of IRIS. She received both her B.Sc. in Biogeography and Environmental Studies and M.Sc. in Botany from the University of Toronto. She completed her Ph.D. in Zoology at Oxford University, UK. Her main area of research is plant–animal interactions. This has included studies of the effect of grazing by lesser snow geese on sub-arctic salt-marshes, foraging behaviour in sheep, plant anti-herbivore defenses and the effects of deer grazing and browsing in Carolinian forests in southern Ontario. She has done field-based research in Scotland, Sweden, Newfoundland and throughout southwestern Ontario.
Bazely is currently a reviewer for journals such as Biological Conservation, Natural History Journal of the Cleveland Museum, American Naturalist, and the Canadian Journal of Botany. She has published over forty articles, chapters, monographs and technical reports.
A trained ecologist, Bazely teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in plant ecology, biological science, population biology, ecology and evolution, ecosystem health. She has supervised over thirty undergraduate students, twelve Master’s students, two Ph.D. candidates and co-supervised three Ph.D. candidates. She has been on countless graduate supervisory committees and examining committees. Bazely was recently awarded the Faculty of Pure and Applied Science, York University, Excellence in Teaching Award.
Acting Director
Stepan Wood
Stepan Wood is an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. He has been a member of the IRIS executive board since its inception and was a member of the academic advisory board of its predecessor, the York Centre for Applied Sustainability, since 1999. His research focuses on corporate social responsibility, sustainability, globalization, transnational private governance, voluntary standards, climate change and environmental law. He is currently directing an IRIS-hosted research project on the forms and dynamics of interaction among transnational business governance initiatives in fields as diverse as accounting standards and sustainable forestry certification. The project, which involves more than thirty researchers from nine countries, representing 23 institutions, is funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Partnership Development Grant.
Stepan is co-author, with Stephen Clarkson, of A Perilous Imbalance: The Globalization of Canadian Law and Governance (2010), co-editor of Climate Law and Developing Countries (2009) and co-editor of Environmental Law for Sustainability (2006). He is Editor-in-Chief of the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Vice-Chair of the Canadian Advisory Committee on the ISO 14001 environmental management systems standard, a frequent Canadian delegate to meetings of ISO Technical Committee 207 on Environmental Management, and was a member of the Canadian Advisory Committee on the ISO 26000 Social Responsibility Guide. Before obtaining his doctorate from Harvard Law School, he was a law clerk to the Supreme Court of Canada and practiced law with the global firm White & Case in New York. He is a member of the bar of New York State.
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Coordinator and IPY Project Manager
Annette Dubreuil
Annette Dubreuil is a Master of Business Administration graduate from the Schulich School of Business at York University, where she specialized in Business and Sustainability, as well as strategy and nonprofits. She also holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Waterloo, specializing in environmental science and business. While at Schulich, she was the editor of the Sustainable Enterprise Brief, a quarterly publication produced by the Sustainable Enterprise Academy and Net Impact for senior executives in business, government and civil society. Annette endeavours to help organizations become more sustainable. To date her IRIS initiatives have included offsetting the course-notes at York University with the Bookstore, where she co-authored a business case for offsetting, multiple IRIS stakeholder surveys (see the IRIS publications page), and coordinated the successful $1 million SSHRC CURA grant application for the Work in a Warming World project that IRIS will house, and will be looking at the relationship between climate change and work and employment. Annette is also involved in an initiative with the Barnes Management Group and the North-South Partnership to bring sustainable economic development via a community owned plan to Northern Ontario aboriginal communities.
Annette is currently the IRIS Coordinator and IPY Project Manager for the GAPS project, which is administered by the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS) at York University.
IRIS Research Projects Coordinator
Patricia Figueiredo
Patricia Figueiredo is the Research Projects Coordinator for the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS). She supports the IRIS Director in planning and coordinating sustainability-related research activities as well as promoting sustainability research on and off-campus.
Patricia manages the Centre’s research projects and is the Project Coordinator for an IDRC-funded research project titled “Strengthening the role of civil society in water sector governance towards climate change adaptation in African cities – Durban, Maputo, Nairobi.”
Patricia holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto, specializing in Professional Writing and Communication. Previously, Patricia worked as a freelance writer.
Web Coordinator & Resident Blogger
Rajiv Rawat
Rajiv is a veteran of the environmental scene, having established his Montreal-area high school’s first environmental club in 1990 and subsequently pursued a B.A. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. While at Cornell, he performed Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax in a traveling road show, participated in Earth Day and other environmental campaigns, and chaired various conservation and recycling committees. After college, Rajiv spent five years working at Harvard University in the AIDS research field and organizing with various global justice and community groups, before returning to Canada for graduate studies including earning an M.E.S. from York University in 2004.
Rajiv is currently a PhD Candidate in the Geography Department of York University. His research involves uneven development, neoliberal transition, and state formation in the Indian Himalayas, and embraces everything from sustainable development and social movements to regional policy planning. He is also an associate of Mountain Shepherds, a community-owned ecotourism company that is pioneering sustainable and culturally sensitive tourism around the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve.
An integral part of these various efforts has been the use of information communication technologies as exhibited by the profusion of web sites under his management, including IRIS and the GAPS Project! He has recently joined the Institute for Circumpolar Health Research in Yellowknife as the Director of Communications and Technology, and also completed a term of service as an implementation coordinator for the Northwest Territories Protected Areas Strategy.
