About

Prof. Kritz’s research frequently engages with environmental change that impacts human health. Her current research collaborations in this area include:

• participatory action research with informal sector workers and communities (e-waste and scrap workers, fisherfolk) to develop a strategy grounded in research, trust-building and collaboration across-sectors to mitigate harmful practices at the intersection of the environment and human health

• GOGREEN, a global study on indicators for co-creating the green transition, with a particular focus on culture

• intervention design with a focus on the COVID-19 response of a rural, Appalachian county in North Carolina.

Prof. Kritz co-designed and serves as the founding Faculty Director for the MS Program program for Climate, Environment & Health. Her participatory action research, modeling complex public problem-solving, and more than a decade teaching the theory and skill of collaborative governance intervention design, are the framework for the program. Core principles of this work include:

• Skill and experience to hold and work through opposing tensions and complexity

• Lateral problem solving across complex, seemingly disparate situations

• Shifting from binary to integrative solutions

The program is the first of its kind to educate students as change agents to lead the resolution of complex public problems stemming from environmental change and impacting human health.

What Makes This Program Distinct