ALWRI welcomes research social scientist, Dr. Lauren Redmore

The Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute recently welcomed Dr. Lauren Redmore to our team!

Lauren is a social scientist who uses mixed qualitative and quantitative methods to understand how people govern natural resources. Her work centers questions of natural resource access and management across scale, spanning individual identities, household resource needs, community values, and wider historical and political contexts impacting stakeholder participation.

Given her interest in understanding processes of empowerment in natural resources, Lauren is thrilled to join the ALWRI team as the first scientist focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion in support of the National Wilderness Preservation System. Her work will focus on several key areas, including access to and exclusion from wilderness areas and wilderness-making processes, and cultural and subsistence values of wilderness areas. She looks forward to building long-lasting partnerships with diverse stakeholders to ensure her work is relevant to the people of the United States, impacts historical legacies of exclusion of minoritized people from wilderness, and supports inclusive stewardship of wilderness areas and resources.

Lauren holds a Bachelors in Biology and Religion from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. After obtaining her M.S. in Forest Resources from Oregon State University where she explored women’s experiences in a network for women forest owners and managers, Lauren was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon from 2009-2012. Lauren obtained her Ph.D. in 2020 from Texas A&M in Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences, with a certificate from the Applied Biodiversity Sciences program. Lauren most recently comes to the ALWRI from the non-profit sector, bringing experiences in program evaluation, project management, and policy analysis across the United States and beyond in parks, protected areas, and other conservation landscape contexts.