Louis Lebel

Dr. Louis Lebel is the founding and current Director of the Unit for Social and Environmental Research (USER), Faculty of Social Science, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

The unit carries out interdisciplinary research on environmental governance with a focus on water, forests and coastal lands. He has been at Chiang Mai University since 1999.  Prior to this he taught and carried out research at Walailak and Prince of Songkla University also in Thailand beginning in 1991. He has on-going research interests in and a history of publications in ecology, epidemiology and public health, political science and environmental governance. His research on risk, resilience and vulnerability has been primarily from the perspective of governance and social justice in flood disaster management.

His unit currently coordinates the Mekong Program on Water, Environment and Resilience (M-POWER) a network of almost 30 organizations committed to improving livelihood security, human and ecosystem health in the Mekong Region through democratizing water governance.

Since 1997 he has held the position of Science Coordinator for the START Global Environmental Change Programme in Southeast Asia with an emphasis on integrating biophysical and human dimensions research. During the period 1995-1998 he was worked in the IGBP:GCTE International Project Office at CSIRO, Canberra, Australia. He is currently on the International Steering Committee for the Earth System Governance Project and the Monsoon Asia Integrated Regional Study. 

He has a PhD from the Department of Zoology, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.