Zoe Nyssa studies the emergence and contemporary practices of conservation biology in order evaluate their impact globally on endangered species.

Zoe earned her Hon. BSc in physics and astronomy at the University of aToronto, an MA at the University of Minnesota, and a PhD in the conceptual and historical studies of Science at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation research examined the rapid growth of conservation science from the 1980s to the present through quantitative and qualitative analyses of environmental research, collaboration, and academic curricula. Her work has been supported by several fellowships and grants, including an Andrew W. Mellon dissertation year fellowship in 2013-2014 from the University of Chicago, a Predoctoral Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and a Student Fellowship from the University of Minnesota Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment and the Life Sciences.

As an Environmental Fellow, Zoe worked with Sheila Jasanoff in the Program on Science, Technology and Society at the Kennedy School of Government. Comparing conservation-oriented programs in the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, and Germany, the project tracked the disciplinary re-organizations of conventional ecological science in different institutional contexts to support new biodiversity objectives. Arguing that these new conservation practices are remaking not just environmental knowledge and policies but materially reshaping environments themselves, this research provided a framework for evaluating the heterogeneous and often surprising consequences of conservation interventions worldwide.

Faculty Host

Sheila Jasanoff, Program on Science, Technology and Society, Harvard Kennedy School