Sustainability Science Program

Ms. Nancy Dickson
Center for International Development
Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
501 Rubenstein Building
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA
Tel: (1) 617-496-9469
Fax: (1) 617-496-8753
Email: nancy_dickson "at" harvard.edu
Group affiliation: Senior Research Associate, Co-Director

Nancy Dickson is a Senior Researcher at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and co-directs the Sustainability Science Program at the Center for International Development. Her research addresses how science, technology, and knowledge can be more effectively brought to bear on creating solutions to problems of public policy. Her work focuses on two areas. The first is on knowledge-action systems for decision support - understanding how the choice of institutions and procedures for linking practitioners and experts influences knowledge production and its effects. The second is on sustainability science - problem-driven, interdisciplinary scholarship that seeks to facilitate the design, implementation, and evaluation of effective interventions that promote environmentally sustainable human development. Dickson manages international, interdisciplinary research applications and capacity building projects and directs the Sustainability Science Fellows Program at Harvard, an interdisciplinary, international group of doctoral, post-doctoral, and mid-career fellows who to come to Harvard for one year. She has served as a Committee member for the National Academy of Sciences, see Assessment of the NASA Applied Sciences Program. Her publications include Global Environmental Assessments: Information and Influence (2006), Sustainability science (PNAS, 2003), and Learning to Manage Global Environmental Risks (2001). She holds a masters degree in regional planning from Cornell University.