Sandra Pinel

Dr. Pinel is a strategic and intergovernmental planning consultant (Gazcelle Partners) and research scholar at Antioch University New England who co-leads the Mountain Social Ecological Network Research Collaborative. She has served as a Fulbright NEXUS of the Americas Scholar, Prometeo fellow, Government of Ecuador and as vice president of the American Planning Association Regional and Intergovernmental Division. Pinel holds an MS and PhD in urban and regional planning from the University of Wisconsin Madison with minors in anthropology and Latin American studies. She applies a long professional planning and community development career with Native American tribal, local, state, non-governmental, and federal agencies and social and cultural anthropology to engaged and comparative research with stakeholders on conflicting interests and the governance of culturally and jurisdictionally complex rural and metropolitan landscapes (sleepinel@gmail.com, spinel@antioch.edu). She is currently coordinating an international team of researchers comparing decentralized land use planning laws and practices. The comparative project asks the question of how and why informal and indigenous institutions and practices are addressed in the governance of land use and infrastructure for adaptive management at multiple scales across peri-urban to rural landscapes and settlements.