Rachelle Gould
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Rachelle Gould, who leads the Ecocultural Values Workshop, is the Steven Rubenstein Professor for Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources (this is a 5-year, rotating endowed professorship, from 2025-2030). She is an inter- and transdisciplinary scholar whose work involves social science, the humanities, and a bit of ecology. Her research explores the relationship between people and ecosystems, with two foci: the values of nature (including cultural ecosystem services and relational values) and lifelong and life-wide environmental education and learning. Attention to equity and justice issues motivate and undergird this work (see our group’s Equity Commitment here). Community-based research is an important part of Rachelle’s approach, and her work involves multiple continents and scores of relationships with conservation practitioners, government officials, and local community members (see details on our Partners page). Rachelle holds interdisciplinary environmental degrees from Harvard (BA), Yale (MA), and Stanford (PhD).
[Rachelle's CV] [Rachelle's Google Scholar page] |
Postdoctoral Scholars
Tabea Hoffmann
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Tabea (she/her) is an Environmental Psychologist. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Ecocultural Values Workshop, where she explores the dynamic relationships between behavior, identity, and values. She is also interested in how people advocate for climate action and communicate about environmental issues. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Groningen (The Netherlands), where she conducted an interdisciplinary doctoral project at the intersection of Urban Planning and Psychology. During this time, she was also a visiting scholar at Boston College. Before beginning her Ph.D., Tabea received a B.Sc. in Psychology from the University of Tübingen (Germany) in 2018 and a Research Master’s in Psychology from the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in 2020.
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PhD Students
Maura Muldoon (2024 - Present)
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Maura is an interdisciplinary PhD student in the Natural Resources program at UVM and a Gund Graduate Fellow. She is motivated by the need to shift societal values towards recognizing the interconnectedness of humans with the rest of nature. Her current research addresses the need to integrate values beyond economic into socioeconomic value assessments. Her dissertation explores the societal value of Earth Observation by developing case studies and valuation methods. Before joining UVM, Maura earned an MSc from the University College of London (UCL) in Global Prosperity and a BSc from the University of Alabama in Aerospace Engineering.
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PhD Alumni
Alison Adams (2015 - 2024)
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Alison completed her PhD with the Ecocultural Values Workshop in 2024. Her dissertation research focused on the ways that ecological degradation impacts people’s experiences of non-material values. Her field work in West Hawaiʻi revealed how resistance and resilience complicate these interactions in systems undergoing rapid environmental change, and the justice and equity implications of differences in impacts to values for Indigenous people, non-Indigenous residents, and tourists. Her dissertation also explored the potential role for art in research on non-material values, using Maya Lin’s What Is Missing? project as a case study. She has a BA in the History of Art from Yale, and an MS in Natural Resources from UVM. She is currently the Director of the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative, where—among other things—she is working to build monitoring of non-material values and public perceptions of forest health issues into the organization’s decades-long forest ecosystem monitoring work.
Dissertation title: Diversity, change, and resilience of non-material values: Transdisciplinary studies in a time of ecological crisis. Papers from dissertation: Adams, A., Palacat-Nelsen, S. A., & Gould, R. K. (2025). Ecological decline degrades non-material values—but resistance and resilience complicate the story. Sustainability Science, 1-19. Adams, A., Palacat-Nelsen, S. A., & Gould, R. K. (2025). One-question interviews elucidate nuances in diverse values of coral reefs in West Hawaiʻi. Ecosystem Services, 75, 101756. Adams, A. & Gould, R. K. (2025). Art’s role in non-material values research: Exploring values and environmental change in Maya Lin’s What Is Missing?. Biological Conservation. [link will be live starting 8:30am on 10/13] | ||
Jen Cirillo (2015 - 2025)
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Jen Cirillo serves as Director of Professional Learning at Shelburne Farms Institute for Sustainable Schools. She is an educator and facilitator who works alongside teachers, schools, and communities to integrate sustainability, place, and food systems into learning. She co-coordinates and co-facilitates the University of Vermont’s Graduate Certificate in Education for Sustainability and leads workshops, institutes, and courses locally and globally. Jen holds a Ph.D. in Natural Resources from UVM, where her dissertation—“The Role of Love and Other Emotions in Transformative Change”—explored how emotions like love lead to action. At the core of her work is a belief that sustainability flourishes through relationships—helping educators and students find joy, purpose, and connection in learning together.
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Diana Hackenburg (2017 - 2025)
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Diana Hackenburg is a program communications specialist at Sandia National Laboratories covering climate security, earth systems, and energy research and development. Diana completed her dissertation in 2025, titled “Nonmaterial values and harmful algal blooms: How communities understand and communicate the impact of environmental degradation.” The first published chapter from her dissertation explores the effects of video messages highlighting different value framings — economic benefits, individual cultural benefits, and collective cultural benefits — affect individual concern, behavioral intentions, and action. Diana holds a Master of Science in Environmental Science and a Master of Public Affairs from Indiana University-Bloomington, and a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science from Marietta College.
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Tatiana Marquina (2016 - 2020)
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Tatiana completed her Ph.D. in 2021, where she examined the role of nonmaterial values in fostering environmental stewardship and pro-environmental behavior. Her research, conducted in Vermont and New York, explored the multiple ways in which people connect and interact with nature. Her work also sought to contribute to the existing methods for measuring ecosystem services and associated values.
She currently works in Puerto Rico as an environmental planner at Estudios Técnicos, consulting private and public entities on environmental management. Her work focuses on integrating multiple nature-based values and activities into environmental decision-making to promote more representative management practices. Recently, she has developed interest in green infrastructure and other nature-based solutions. Through her work, Tatiana aims to raise awareness and promote broader acceptance of these solutions in hazard mitigation. Dissertation title: How and Why Do People Value Nature? An Examination of Nonmaterial Aspects of Human-Nature Interactions Papers from dissertation: Marquina, T and Gould, R.K. (2025). Methods to Measure Relative Importance of Cultural Ecosystem Services. In The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Ecosystem Services Marquina, T., Gould, R. K. & Murdoch, D. (2023). ‘Hey, tree. You are my friend’: Assessing multiple values of nature through letters to trees. People and Nature, 5, 415–430. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10334 Marquina, T., Hackenburg, D., Duray, H., Fisher, B., & Gould, R. K. (2022). Lessons from an experiment with values-based messaging to support watershed conservation. Conservation Biology, 36, e13910. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13910 Marquina, T., Emery, M., Hurley, P., & Gould, R. K. (2022). The ‘quiet hunt’: the significance of mushroom foraging among Russian-speaking immigrants in New York City. Ecosystems and People, 18(1), 226–240. https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2022.2055148 |
Joshua Morse (2017 - 2024)
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Josh is a PhD candidate at the Rubenstein School and a Gund Graduate Fellow. He uses interdisciplinary methods to study how natural resources are valued, and how those values are incorporated (or not incorporated!) into policy. Josh’s dissertation research centers on Vermont’s public and political debates over coyote management, and the role that stories play in communicating diverse values around wildlife. Josh is committed to returning concrete benefits to the communities he works with, and applies citizen science and environmental education approaches to conduct research that aims to contribute to the public good. Before graduate school, Josh worked as a land steward at a small land trust in western Massachusetts. In his spare time, he enjoys exploring the woods with his dog Pepper. [Josh's CV] [Josh's Google Scholar page] [A popular press piece by Josh] [Check out Josh on a podcast!]
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Daniel Pratson (2020 - Present)
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Daniel is a PhD student at the Rubenstein School and a Gund Graduate Fellow. He is part of an interdisciplinary team studying the ecological, economic, and social factors tied into maple sugaring in Vermont. He aims to critically engage theory in applied natural resource contexts in order to inform conservation and sustainability-oriented practices. Previous experiences as a high school science teacher and laboratory analyst (among a range of other positions) help inform Daniel’s proclivity for interdisciplinary approaches to exploring how people understand and interact with the natural world.
Daniel holds an interdisciplinary BA from St. Mary's College of Maryland and an MS from Virginia Tech's School of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation. |
Post-doc Alumni
Carlos Andres Gallegos (2020 - 2023)
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A Gund Postdoctoral Associate from 2020–2023, recipient of the Nature and Health Fellowship, with co-supervisors, Rachelle Gould (The importance of Latin American scholarship-and-practice for the relational turn in sustainability science: a reply to West et al.(2020); Chronic deficiency of diversity and pluralism in research on nature's mental health effects: A planetary health problem) and Ernesto Méndez (Terraces and ancestral knowledge in an Andean agroecosystem: a call for inclusiveness in planetary health action) as co-supervisors. His research explores the intersections of agroecology, planetary health, Indigenous People, and justice. A grateful former member of the EcoCultural Values workshop and current collaborator, Carlos Andres is now a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Agriculture, Landscape, and Environment at the University of Vermont, faculty at the Institute for Agroecology—where he co-coordinates the Agroecology and Planetary Health research program—and a Gund Affiliate.
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Harold Eyster (2021 - 2024)
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Harold was a Gund Postdoctoral Associate from 2021–2024 conducting research on relationships among urban trees, people, and birds, and published papers on green gentrification, ecological grief, and social science theory in conservation. Harold now works at the science–policy nexus at The Nature Conservancy. Website: eyster.com
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