Lindsay Galway
Lindsay is an associate professor at Lakehead University, the Canada Research Chair in Social-Ecological Health, and the Community-Engaged Research Advisor for the KO Tribal Council. Her work spans the social, natural, and health sciences and aims to bring together multiple perspectives in order to understand and address complex social-ecological challenges, with a focus on climate change. Using an interdisciplinary, applied, and community-engaged approach, her current research activities focus on three core areas:
(1) Investigating the impacts of climatic and environmental change on health and wellbeing; (2) Using place-based approaches to respond to, and address, climatic and environmental change in ways that promote sustainability, health, and social justice; and (3) Supporting integration, interdisciplinarity, and intersectoral action.
Caitlin Hastings
Caitlin Hastings is an education and communications professional with a Master of Education - Social Justice Specialization from Lakehead University. Her work has focused on climate education, environmental research, and environmental justice. She is passionate about exploring how environmental issues intersect with social justice, equity, and community wellbeing, and about making climate research accessible and actionable for diverse audiences.
Her research focuses on climate emotions, youth support systems, and sustainability in education, with an emphasis on supporting meaningful conversations and action around climate resilience and environmental justice. Alongside her academic work, Caitlin brings experience in digital communications, qualitative and quantitative research, curriculum development, and public outreach through social media, website management, and educational content creation. Her work combines research, storytelling, and advocacy to help educators, students, and communities engage more deeply with environmental challenges and solutions.
Ellen Field
Dr. Ellen Field is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Lakehead University. Her research focuses on the policy and practice of climate change education within Canadian education systems. She teaches Environmental Education in the B.Ed. program and Climate Change Education in the M.Ed., and has worked with hundreds of in-service teachers through professional development initiatives.
She is the lead consultant on the National Framework for Environmental Learning, co-leads the Accelerating Climate Change Education in Teacher Education project, and serves as an Associate Editor for the Canadian Journal of Environmental Education. Ellen is also a contributing author to UNESCO’s Greening Education Guidance, a policy framework supporting countries in integrating climate change education into curricula.
Sydney Hunt
Sydney Hunt is a Research Assistant on the Climate Anxiety and Coping Among Youth and Young Adults project. She holds a Master of Public Health with a specialization in Indigenous and Northern Health.
Her interests include climate emotions and coping, nature-based approaches to health and wellbeing, and knowledge translation and mobilization. She is particularly interested in how research can be translated into meaningful action and integrated into practice, ensuring that evidence is accessible, relevant, and useful to the individuals, groups, and communities it is intended to support.
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Thomas Beery
Tom Beery is a Swedish researcher and educator at Kristianstad University whose work centers on environmental and outdoor education, with a strong emphasis on human relationships with nature. His research draws on environmental education, environment. psychology, human geography, and place-based perspectives to explore how individuals—particularly children and young people—develop meaningful connections to natural environments. Beery is especially interested in how everyday encounters with nearby nature, such as school grounds, urban green spaces, and local landscapes, shape people’s perceptions, experiences, and sense of belonging in the more-than-human world.
A key focus of Beery’s scholarship is the concept of nature connection and how it can be fostered through outdoor education practices within lived landscapes. He examines how direct, embodied experiences in nature—such as sensory engagement, exploration, and reflection—support learning and deepen emotional ties to place. His work highlights the role of outdoor education in landscape science by emphasizing how accessible, familiar environments can nurture care, curiosity, and responsibility, ultimately contributing to more engaged relationships between people and the landscapes they inhabit.
Jennifer Chestnut
For the past 15 years, Jennifer Chesnut has been an environmental educator and activist. She is a Work That Reconnects facilitator who was introduced to the process as a young adult struggling with eco-emotions. Jennifer is a research assistant on this project and is designing a dissertation that aims to support adults to take climate action through emotional methodologies.