Sievanen, Leila

Leila Sievanen is an environmental anthropologist whose research interests broadly include the topics of biodiversity conservation and international development, people-park interactions, and the material and symbolic ways in which the natural world is understood, produced, and contested.

She received NSF and Fulbright funding to conduct dissertation research on factors related to why government officials, communities, and individuals responded in the way that they did to marine environmental policies in a national park in Indonesia. This research was related to her participation in a multi-disciplinary team researching factors related to coral reef conservation sustainability in Southeast Asia.

In the US, she has worked at NOAA/Northwest Fisheries Science Center to help define an anthropological research agenda for marine protected areas and fisheries management. She is currently comparing how social, cultural, and ecological context influences ecosystem-based management practices in Mexico, the US, and the Western Pacific.