Jessica Vandenberg
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Jessica Vandenberg (PhD, University of Rhode Island) is an interdisciplinary marine social scientist whose research examines how power, knowledge, and equity shape practices of ocean care and their governance, including marine restoration and pollution remediation. At the University of Miami, Jessica’s research focuses on the governance of coral restoration in Florida, including the relationships, resources, and forms of knowledge that shape restoration policy and practice.
Jessica uses both ethnographic and critical discourse approaches to investigate how governance systems operate across scales, connecting global institutional trends with their local and lived consequences. One strand of her research examines the equity implications of the increasing neoliberalization of ocean governance, including the growing involvement of corporations in environmental agenda-setting and intervention. A complementary strand explores alternative pathways toward equitable environmental futures that center diverse knowledge systems and relational forms of care.
Her work demonstrates how approaches to ocean governance can draw upon plural ways of knowing, valuing, and caring for marine environments that extend beyond dominant Western scientific frameworks. By bringing critical scholarship into conversation with pressing challenges in marine policy and practice, she seeks to advance both theoretical understanding and applied approaches to more equitable and just forms of ocean care and governance.
Before joining the University of Miami, Jessica held postdoctoral appointments at the University of Washington, Harvard University, and the University of Rhode Island’s Ocean Nexus Center.
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