Associate Professor, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
Mehana Blaich Vaughan is an associate professor in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and the UH Sea Grant Program. Her research interests include collaborative and community-based resource governance; indigenous ecological knowledge; place-based education; common property rights; and approaches to enhance collaboration, learning, and dialogue in decision-making surrounding natural resources. Mehana completed her PhD in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (EIPER) at Stanford University in 2012. Her dissertation focused on collaborative management of a Hawaiian coastal fishery by government agencies and community members. At the University of Hawai’i, Mehana works with a consortium of scholars—from Sea Grant, Hawaiian Studies and Law—who focus on cross-disciplinary solutions to natural and cultural resource management, sustainability, and food security issues.
She is also investigating changing patterns of access to natural resources in Hawai’i through an NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability (SEES) postdoctoral fellowship. Mehana grew up in the rural Halele’a district on the island of Kaua’i. Prior to pursuing a doctoral degree, she taught middle and high school, developing place-based education programs for Hawaiian immersion and charter schools. She has three children and is grateful to her ‘ohana (family) and the many friends, teachers, students, kūpuna (elders) and Hawai’i communities that have supported, guided, and informed her work.