About
Stephen Chignell, PhD
Founder
Stephen Chignell is an environmental researcher who combines geospatial analysis with archival research, interviews and network analysis. He holds a PhD in Resources, Environment and Sustainability from the University of British Columbia (2023), where his thesis received the Freda Pagani Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis, and an MS in Watershed Science from Colorado State University.
His research has covered Ethiopia's Bale Mountains, the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica, Britain's national parks and the Colorado Rockies. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, co-lead of the Interdisciplinary Synthesis theme of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) programme Integrated Science to Inform Antarctic and Southern Ocean Conservation (Ant-ICON), and a member of the editorial board of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers.
Selected experience
- 2026
- Expert witness, Federal Court of Canada. Geospatial analysis of land flooded by a dam constructed in the 1960s, and testimony on that analysis.
- 2024 to present
- Honorary Research Fellow, University of Bristol (Postdoctoral Research Associate, 2024). Applied environmental histories of Britain's national parks.
- 2021 to present
- Research programme co-lead, SCAR. Co-lead of the Interdisciplinary Synthesis theme of Ant-ICON, including the organization of international workshops on priorities for Antarctic conservation.
- 2019 to 2023
- Senior Research Assistant, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado Boulder. Environmental history of the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research project.
- 2019
- U.S. Water Expert, U.S. Department of State. Advised the Addis Ababa River Basin and Green Areas Agency on GIS and water management, working with the Regional Environmental Office at the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia.
- 2015 to 2018
- Technical lead, Secondary Cities Initiative. Produced open geospatial data for 16 cities across the Global South with university, government and non-government partners, and co-led technical exchanges on participatory mapping in Ecuador and South Africa.
- 2013 to 2015
- Team lead, NASA DEVELOP National Program. Led a project mapping 40 years of fire history in Ethiopia's Bale Mountains, selected as a 2015 flagship project by NASA's Applied Earth Sciences Division, and three further projects in the United States.
Selected publications
- Chignell SM, Kim Y, Johnson M (2025). Remote sensing-based ecohydrogeological characterization and perceptual model of the Bale Mountains, Ethiopia. Hydrological Processes.
- Chignell SM, Ramachandran A, Satterfield T (2024). One size fits all: How the ‘Ethiopian Highlands’ made Bale Mountains National Park inscrutable. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.
- Chignell SM, Satterfield T (2023). Seeing beyond the frames we inherit: A challenge to tenacious conservation narratives. People and Nature.
- Chignell SM, Myers M, Howkins A, Fountain AG (2021). Research sites get closer to field camps over time: Informing environmental management through a geospatial analysis of science in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. PLoS ONE.
- Hopping KA, Chignell SM, Lambin EF (2018). The demise of caterpillar fungus in the Himalayan region due to climate change and overharvesting. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A full list is available on ResearchGate. Professional profile on LinkedIn.
Organizations named on this page are listed to describe the founder's professional experience. They do not endorse Integrative Insights, and the company's work is independent of those roles.
