James Douglas Langston

James has a broad-based interdisciplinary background and works on the interconnected issues that shape development trajectories in landscapes, mainly tropical. He is interested in governance, learning, and how change happens. Previously he explored ways of achieving ‘embedded science’ in high-stakes forest landscapes where people, nature, and their institutions are going through transition. His PhD centred on a practical political ecology of spatial development initiatives in Indonesia; he continues to advance that work in CSIRO with the Landscape and Forest Function Team. He maintains transdisciplinary partnerships in Indonesia, the Mekong region, the Congo Basin, the Pacific, and in British Columbia. His past and present commitments are born of a desire to stimulate more just learning mechanisms that influence discourses on desirable future landscapes, and the decision-making systems that shape their benefits.