Jessie Hughes – SPEAR4

Jessie Hughes is a social sciences researcher and human ecologist fascinated by human relationships with the environment. Her M.S. research frames ecological identity as a social mechanism of resilience, and examines the role of humans in enhancing resilience within social-ecological systems undergoing rapid change.

Trained as a designer of the built environment with a love for the natural world, Ms. Hughes integrates her diverse experiences with her growing academic wheelhouse in the natural sciences. While undertaking a 2,200 mile thru hike of the Appalachian Trail, she was inspired to join the Peace Corps and work in community-based natural resource management, fostering ecological knowledge development and dialogue amongst diverse groups of people. While serving stints in Burkina Faso and Nepal, she witnessed how a changing climate affects natural resource-based people and livelihoods, and was motivated to pursue graduate study towards enhancing resilience of peoples and places.

Ms. Hughes’ work portfolio includes the American Red Cross and several NGOs focused on refugee and immigrant services. She has earned the Alpha Rho Chi Medal, Department of State Critical Language Scholarship in Hindi, and is a four-time recipient of the Foreign Language & Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship in Nepali. In her free time, Ms. Hughes can be found foraging, hunting, and teaching knitting classes in her native Finger Lakes, NY. She holds a B.S. in Architecture from the Georgia Institute of Technology and M.P.S. in Global Development from Cornell University. View CV here.

Personal Links:

Samples of Work:

Hughes, J. (2022). Twice tethered: An examination of transcience and social-ecological vulnerablity in Nepal’s central hills. Cornell University Press, 137. https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/113245
Hughes, J. (2019, May 17). Growing trees and relationships in Nepal. Peace Corps. https://www.peacecorps.gov/stories/growing-trees-and-relationships-nepal/