Kira L. Johnson

Kira(she/her) is a PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University under the supervision of Dr. Maya Gislason. Kira holds a MSc in Conservation Biology from the University of Kent, Canterbury’s Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology where she studied how traditionally managed community orchards in England are governed and whether they could be considered Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (as defined by the IUCN), this research was supervised by Dr. Helen Newing. Her undergraduate degree is in anthropology, from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Kira is very interested in how the wicked problems of our time are interconnected and might be governed as such. To explore how this might be achieved, her PhD research asks: what concepts, ideas, and jurisdictional and knowledge scales are central to planetary health governance, and how might planetary health governance be best implemented across jurisdictional and knowledge scales? Kira's work is informed by complexity theory, complex adaptive systems, and multisolving. When not working on her PhD thesis, Kira is a research assistant for the SFU Planetary Health Research Group and the SFU Research for Ecosocial and Equitable Transformation Lab (RESET). Outside of academe, Kira loves hiking with her dog-friend Norman. She also practices circus arts like juggling, stilt walking, and aerial dance for fun.