Chris Jadallah

Research 

Chris’s research examines how community-based environmental projects (e.g. community science efforts) support forms of learning and literacy that catalyze social and ecological transformation. Specifically, he studies how scientists, conservation professionals, and broader publics collectively learn and co-create knowledge through shared participation in these projects. He pays particular attention to the cultural, relational, affective, and embodied dimensions of learning across settings, with a special interest in how uneven power relations between actors can afford or constrain opportunities for multiple ways of knowing to be considered in environmental problem-solving.

Chris bring an interdisciplinary lens to this work, drawing from fields such as the learning sciences, science and environmental education research, and political ecology to better understand how community-based environmental projects can be designed as learning environments that:

1. Create and deepen opportunities for individuals and communities – particularly those historically excluded from environmental science and decision-making – to contribute their knowledge, values, and perspectives in shaping scientific and conservation endeavors. 

2. Provide learners with opportunities to pursue their own interest-driven and personally meaningful environmental inquiries. 

3. Disrupt conventional hierarchies that privilege the expertise of scientists and conservation professionals over the local knowledge and practices found distributed within communities. 

Chris’s projects are rooted in diverse social-ecological contexts – from diversified farming systems to dam removal and river restoration efforts – where he works to support moves toward more healthy, just, and resilient social and ecological futures.  This work is informed by qualitative and ethnographic methods in addition to critical and sociocultural perspectives on learning. Central to Chris’s research is a commitment to community-engaged scholarship. This entails building close partnerships with diverse stakeholder groups to simultaneously co-design, organize, and study initiatives that bring together multiple actors to address real-world environmental problems. 

Interests:  environmental education, science education, environmental justice, learning in informal environments, community science, citizen science, biodiversity conservation, agroecology, social-ecological systems, political ecology, restoration, stewardship 

Education 

PhD in Science and Agricultural Education, 2023
School of Education
University of California, Davis

B.S. in Conservation and Resource Studies, 2016
College of Natural Resources
University of California, Berkeley

Fellowships and Awards

National Science Foundation 
2018-2023 Graduate Research Fellowship 

UC Davis Graduate Group in Education
2022 Award for Scholarly Promise 

American Educational Research Association Environmental Education Special Interest Group
2022 Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award 

American Geophysical Union
2021 Outstanding Student Presentation Award 

Contact

ccjadallah@ucdavis.edu