Contributor

Robin Bronen

Executive Director of Alaska Institute for Justice; Senior Research scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks

Robin Bronen lives in Alaska, works as a human rights attorney and has been researching the climate-induced relocation of Alaska Native communities since 2007. She received her PhD in December 2012 from the Resilience and Adaptation Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and received her Juris Doctorate from the University of California at Davis. She is a senior research scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology. She also works as the executive director of the Alaska Institute for Justice, a non-profit agency that is the only immigration legal service provider in Alaska, houses a Language Interpreter Center, training bilingual Alaskans to be professional interpreters, and also is a research and policy institute focused on climate justice issues. The Alaska Bar Association awarded her the 2007 Robert Hickerson Public Service award and the 2012 International Human Rights award. The Federal Bureau of Investigation awarded the Alaska Institute for Justice the 2012 FBI Director’s Community Service award and the International Soroptomost’s awarded her the 2012 Advancing the Rights of Women award. She is working as an expert on climate-induced planned relocations with the UN High Commission for Refugees and is a member of the advisory group for the Nansen Initiative, a state-led, bottom-up consultative process intended to build consensus on the development of a protection agenda addressing the needs of people displaced in the context of natural hazards, including the effects of climate change. Her research has been featured in the Guardian, CNN, Climate Wire and Nature magazine. She has written numerous articles published by Brookings Institution, the Guardian, New York University Law Review and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, among others. She has been an expert witness for Congressional hearings focused on the community relocations and regularly presents her research at conferences focused on climate change adaptation, disaster relief reduction and climate change and population displacement.