Elspeth Mathau is a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge in the Department of Geography. Her research examines the impacts of climate change on agricultural development and biodiversity conservation in the northern Canadian boreal forest. Growing up in the coastal redwood forest surrounded by nature she was often involved in local biodiversity conservation initiatives. This sparked her interest in studying climate and environmental change and a passion for practicing environmental stewardship.
The aim of her research is to understand how climate change is impacting current agricultural projects, wild foods, and potential expansion in subarctic Canada, focusing on the Yukon and Northern BC. It also looks at the implications of this development for biodiversity conservation and biocultural adaptation of local and traditional food systems. What can we learn from peoples and landscapes in remote parts of the world that are experiencing climate changes and warming at a more rapid rate? Her hope in studying subarctic regions is to gain insight into how climate change is shaping emergent agriculture and into the potential to evolve more stable biodiverse landscapes and livelihoods, and climate-adaptive practices.
Elspeth’s academic and work experience have taken her to Canada, Morocco, the UK and US and she has dedicated her career to environmental conservation, food sovereignty, equity and social justice work. She has worked as an environmental biologist conducting conservation, assessment, and restoration projects in California which has helped her prepare for her current research fieldwork.
At the University of Toronto in the School for the Environment where she received her BSc (Hons), she focused on environmental science and urban sustainability issues with a keen interest in food sovereignty. She worked on campus running the DigIn Campus Agriculture Network and other sustainable food initiatives. This grounding in an urban setting and community-based work has helped her find useful connections within her urban and rural research sites in northern Canada.
She worked with the Global Diversity Foundation (GDF) in Morocco for her MSc in Ethnobotany at the University of Kent, School of Anthropology and Conservation. There her research examined ecological change, economic and agricultural development, and climate adaptation in the food systems of Indigenous Amazigh (Imazighen) communities in the Moroccan High Atlas Mountains. This work inspired her current research in northern Canada, as remote high latitude and high-altitude regions are facing many similar challenges in their food systems and traditional indigenous livelihoods with the rapidly changing climate and environment. In 2022 she was selected by the GDF to be part of their Global Environments Summer Academy Fellowship which led her to join their Global Environments Network to continue collaborating with other environmental and social justice change makers around the world during her current research and in projects beyond.
Elspeth was awarded the Copper Street Capital LLP Scholarship 2023-2024.
