Research Group
I will join the faculty of the Energy and Resources Group (ERG) at UC Berkeley in July 2027 and will be building my research group there.
We study human-environment relations and how cultural values, ecological knowledge, and land use shape climate adaptation and environmental governance. Climate adaptation is never value-neutral. The institutional frameworks guiding environmental governance embed particular ways of valuing land, often at the expense of the communities most affected by ecological change. Some of the questions we ask: What values do communities hold toward the landscapes they care about? Whose values count in decisions about the future of those landscapes? And what models exist for meaningfully including those values in environmental stewardship?
This work is grounded in community-engaged research, long-term ethnographic fieldwork, and mixed-method social science. We spend years in the places we study, working alongside communities to understand how people know, use, and care for the land. We explore how those relationships shift under environmental, social, and political change. Our research partnerships include Indigenous nations, rural communities, agricultural producers, community-based organizations, policymakers, and land management agencies.
Spanning environmental anthropology, human-environment geography, and the interdisciplinary environmental social sciences, the group integrates qualitative and quantitative methods, including ethnography, interviews, focus groups, survey research, community science, participatory mapping, spatial analysis, and archival research. Students are trained in these methods through field-based learning and engaged partnerships with the communities at the center of our work.
The group is committed to research that is accountable to the communities we collaborate with, contributing to scholarship and generating tools, data, and relationships that serve community-defined needs. Current projects are based in California and the Great Basin, including Indigenous forest stewardship in the Sierra Nevada, agricultural land transitions in the San Joaquin Valley, and frameworks for integrating cultural ecosystem services into land stewardship across multiple sites. I welcome students working across different regions and communities, whose questions extend beyond the group’s current projects.
Joining the Research Group
Prospective graduate students: I am accepting graduate students who would begin at Berkeley in fall 2027 or later. Students apply to the ERG graduate program rather than to individual faculty, and admissions decisions are made by the admissions committee. Information on requirements, deadlines, and funding is available on the ERG graduate program page and graduate admissions page.
If your interests align with the group's research, you are welcome to email me at burow@berkeley.edu. I will follow up with those whose interests are a close fit. Contact is not required and you are welcome to apply whether or not we have corresponded.
Prospective postdoctoral scholars: I do not currently have funded postdoctoral positions, but I welcome inquiries from prospective postdocs interested in developing a project for external funding. Relevant fellowships include the USDA National Institute of Food & Agriculture Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship, S.V. Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellowship at Berkeley, and National Science Foundation SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. For more information on being a postdoc at Berkeley, please see: https://vspa.berkeley.edu/
Prospective undergraduate researchers: I will have opportunities for UC Berkeley undergraduate research assistants in the future. Details will be posted here closer to my start date.
