Elizabeth Nyboer

Assistant Professor, Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Virginia Tech

Post-doctoral Fellow (Jan 1 - Dec 31, 2022) | she/her/hers

My name is Elizabeth (Beth) Nyboer. I am a settler of Dutch/German descent currently residing on the homelands of the Tutelo/Monacan Peoples in what is colonially called Virginia. My research looks at impacts of large-scale stressors on freshwater ecosystems and the fish, fisheries, and fishing communities they support. I have worked in a variety of contexts stretching across continents and great lake systems from Lake Victoria in East African to the Laurentian Great Lakes in North America. Across all contexts, community engagement and partnership are at the core of my approach.  My work further seeks to understand how applied conservation research can have the greatest impact in environmental policy and practice. I am passionate about research that brings together academic disciplines and upholds and interweaves multiple ways of knowing and understanding the world to find holistic solutions to complex conservation challenges.

As a postdoctoral fellow with the Centre for Indigenous Fisheries, my work aimed to enhance collective understanding of Indigenous perspectives on the management and control of invasive sea lamprey in the Great Lakes region, and this work continues to be a core element of my research program at Virginia Tech. Funded by the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission (GLFC), the core goal of this work is to address the long history of Indigenous exclusion from fisheries decision-making processes by documenting experiences, knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about sea lamprey and identifying ideas, priorities, and better/best practices to guide future conservation in the Great Lakes region. To conduct this work, we follow the principles of co-production by engaging with allowing research to be guided by and answer the needs of Indigenous community partners. We use transdisciplinary approaches that interweave Indigenous knowledge and methodologies alongside social science and ecological research tools.

Website: https://elizabethnyboer.weebly.com/
Email: enyboer[at]vt.edu