about

Rebecca L Farnum is an environmental peacebuilding researcher and educator. She works at the intersections of environmental activism, conflict resolution, and capacity-building with a particular passion for justice and equity, leveraging academia for public service and policy impact. Her work has included contributing to United Nations and International Law Commission policy on environmental peacebuilding; engaging underrepresented students in university learning through Widening Participation initiatives; and supporting government transparency through a stint with Michelle Obama’s Correspondence Team at The White House.

Becca is currently based at Syracuse University London, where she promotes environmental justice and global citizenship. Her portfolio includes teaching the university’s first Indigenous Studies course abroad; leading field studies in Copenhagen, Flåm, Stockholm, and Inari exploring sustainability in Northern Europe; and strengthening the University’s special relationship with Lockerbie, Scotland.

Her PhD in Geography from King’s College London partnered with three activist groups in the Middle East and North Africa to explore discourses of environmental conflict, cooperation, and diplomacy. In Aït Baamrane, Dar Si Hmad uses innovative fog harvesting technology to provide potable water for Amazigh communities and host an Ethnographic Field School in an underrepresented region of Morocco. The Media Association for Peace employs journalism to support conflict transformation in Lebanon; their Media, Peace & Environment project was the first to consider what ‘environmental peace journalism’ might look like. In the Gulf, the Kuwait Dive Team has leveraged the environmental destruction of the Iraqi Invasion to encourage community volunteerism for marine conservation.

Becca also holds an LLM in International Law focused on environmental and human rights law at the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Water Security and International Development from the University of East Anglia. She graduated in May 2012 from Michigan State University with first degrees in anthropology, interdisciplinary humanities, international development, and international relations. Her honors thesis project explored “Food and Water as the Middle East and North Africa’s ‘Coal and Steel’: Regional Economic Integration and Peace Prospects.”

In the United Kingdom, Becca has worked with Holt Hall Environmental & Outdoor Learning Centre to teach environmental education residential programmes for students and The Brilliant Club to tutor high-achieving pupils from under-resourced schools. She also serves on the Board of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association and as Director of Administration for the AMENDS Global Fellows of the American Middle Eastern Network for Dialogue at Stanford.