Kate Mussett

M.Sc. | she/her/hers

Hi - I’m Kate. I am a settler-descended ecologist from the East Coast of what is now known as Canada. I was born and raised in and around Halifax, Nova Scotia where I spent most of my time learning from the ocean. Upon relocating to the West Coast to complete an Honours undergraduate degree in Anthropology and Environment + Society at UBC Vancouver, I was introduced to all that BC's outdoors has to offer, and began to connect to this new place through skiing, mountain biking, climbing, and hiking. My favourite place to be is outdoors, learning new things from both new and familiar faces. In my education and career, my aim is to dismantle colonial impacts on and within academia and science through working for and with Indigenous peoples, multiple ways of knowing, and principles of relationality to land and water.

I have always been influenced by the ocean and its inhabitants. Through my undergraduate degree at UBC, I was able to combine an education in anthropology and the relationship between people, culture, and the environment, with natural resource conservation. The interdisciplinary nature of my degree allowed me to learn from a number of approaches to current issues in conservation through oceanography, forest science, fisheries biology, and social ecology. 

I carry forward many of these same goals and research interests into my MSc under the guidance of Dr. Andrea Reid, with the Centre for Indigenous Fisheries. My research involves knowledge co-production in fish and fish habitat aquatic health assessments with Lower Fraser River First Nations and aims to co-develop a framework that can be used by interested First Nations across British Columbia. It is an honour to be able to position my work within a discipline I am truly passionate about and I look forward to helping to shift the ways in which we, as settler Canadians, look at science and scientific research. When not dedicating myself to these pursuits, I can often be found in the mountains, backcountry skiing, mountain biking, or fishing.

Email: k.mussett[at]oceans.ubc.ca