Karen Bakker Keynote Speaker

Author and Conservation Technology Researcher
Professor at the University of British Columbia
Recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Stanford University’s Annenberg Fellowship in Communication, Canada’s “Top 40 Under 40″, and a Trudeau Foundation Fellowship.

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Karen Bakker's Biography

Karen Bakker is a well-known Canadian author, researcher, and entrepreneur with expertise in environmental governance, sustainability, and digital transformation.

She is a Rhodes Scholar with a Ph.D. from Oxford and is currently a professor at the University of British Columbia. Bakker has received numerous awards throughout her career, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Stanford University’s Annenberg Fellowship in Communication, Canada’s “Top 40 Under 40,” and a Trudeau Foundation Fellowship.

Bakker has published over 100 academic papers, including seven scholarly books, and her work has been cited more than 16,000 times. She has served as a policy advisor to organizations like the IPCC, National Round Table on Environment and Economy, OECD, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, and OHCHR. Bakker is also a member of various research groups, including the Decolonizing Water research collective, the Riverhood project team, and the Coalition on Digital Environmental Sustainability.

Bakker’s current research focuses on the intersection of digital technologies and environmental governance, digital environmental humanities, digital geographies, political ecology, and political economy. She has also written about water governance, accessibility, and policy, and her publications include Privatizing Water: Governance Failure and the World’s Urban Water Crisis and An Uncooperative Commodity: Privatizing Water in England and Wales.

Her latest book, The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants, was published by Princeton University Press in October 2022, and it has received widespread critical acclaim.