Jasper Montana is currently a research associate in Evidence, Expertise, and Policymaking at the University of Sheffield. Jasper Montana was a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography of the University of Cambridge and a Visiting Research Fellow with the Harvard STS Program in the fall of 2015. His research examines environment-society relations with a current focus on the global governance of biodiversity and ecosystem services. While at Harvard, Jasper was working on research that analyses the institutional arrangements and the knowledge-making practices of experts in an emergent UN-level biodiversity initiative: the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

While carrying out this research, Jasper spent time at the heart of some of the decision and knowledge making processes of this global environmental assessment and governance mechanism. As a geographer and science and technology studies scholar, his analysis will draw on key theoretical frameworks from these disciplines. Through this research, Jasper aims to understand how IPBES – as an organisation predominantly composed of scientists and policy practitioners – might fit within a certain tradition of ‘managing nature wisely’ and how it’s work might envision or co-produce new approaches to governing biodiversity.

Jasper received a BSc in zoology from the University of Melbourne and an MSc in science, technology and society from University College London (UCL). He has five year’s professional experience in television documentary production for the BBC and National Geographic and has spent time filming in remote locations the world over. Jasper was first introduced to the STS Program at the Harvard Kennedy School during a summer school on ‘Science and Governance at the Frontiers of Life’ in 2014.