Biography:
Rebecca Kariuki is a currently a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Sustainability and the College of Global Futures in Arizona State University, USA. She is also an affiliate of the African Academy of Sciences, Nairobi, Kenya and a Climate Change Fellow at the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Kigali, Rwanda. After completing her PhD with the Resilience in East African Landscape (REAL) Project in 2018, she worked with the Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change (ARCC) project as a Postdoctoral Fellow. She was based at the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology (NM-AIST) in Arusha, Tanzania.
In 2021, Rebecca was a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC) in Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Munich, Germany. Her research has been interested in exploring pathways to sustainable futures for East and Southern African drylands by integrating perspectives from the natural and social sciences with quantitative modelling. In particular, her work develops future land use and land cover changes scenarios and assesses their potential implications for biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services and the sustainability of biodiversity-rich drylands.
Rebecca graduated from the University of Nairobi, Kenya, with a Master of Science (Biology of Conservation) degree and a Bachelor of Science (Chemistry and Zoology) degree. Her M.Sc. project thesis assessed the effects of cattle grazing and trampling on herbaceous vegetation quality of semi-arid rangelands in Laikipia County in northern Kenya’.
Besides her research work, Rebecca has worked as a consultant and trainer in horizon scanning, Environmental and Social Impact Assessments, landscape ecology, spatial and statistical analysis, environmental modelling, and water supply and sanitation topics with the University of Nairobi, Kenya Methodist University, African Conservation Centre, Kenya Wildlife Services, and Losai Management Limited in Kenya, and the University of York, UK.
Email:
Rebecca.Kariuki@asu.edu
Address:
School of Sustainability
College of Global Futures
Arizona State University, USA
Alumna: York Institute of Tropical Ecosystems
Environment and Geography Department
University of York, UK