Rebecca Hardin

Biography & Research

Rebecca Hardin is professor of sustainable development in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dameand a core-affiliated faculty member of the Pulte Institute for Global Development.

Trained in environmental anthropology as well as international and area studies, Hardin also is director, of the Gala Online Learning Platform, an open source, open access learning environment. Gala users, whether individuals, communities or wider consortia, collaborate on incrementally improving modules for teaching and learning. Data and media rich, and interactive, these modules serve fields including biotechnology and life sciences, environmental justice, tropical ecology, environmental engineering, neurotechnology, archeology and more. Hardin collaborates with philanthropic institutions such as the New America Foundation and its Public Interest Technology University Network, and public facing boundary organizations like The Water Tower in Gywinnett County, Georgia, with its Workforce Training programs.

Hardin's commitment to open software ecosystems began in actual ecosystems of the Central African Republic. While a Peace Corps volunteer and Fulbright researcher in the 1990s, she depended for her learning and daily living on beekeepers, trackers, farmers, hunters and gatherers. Because they are not formally educated, such knowledge holders are often excluded from policy debates and political negotiations about land, water, labor and more.

Hardin's dissertation research in contemporary and colonial archives documenting development and conservation projects unearthed patterns over time in local and transnational geopolitics of environmental stewardship and exploitation. She was especially interested in how Equatorial African political and cultural practices have shaped concessionary regimes for resource management (whether extractive, like logging, or expropriative, like conservation).

Today, Hardin is interested in building digital archives that enable FAIR and CAREful knowledge exchange that respects and reinforces intellectual property and data from marginalized individuals and communities. Within universities and networks of universities, she enjoys working with interdisciplinary engineering, history of science, ecology and global or local partnership teams of increasingly diverse educators and learners to co-create such systems, ensuring they are closely tethered to experiential learning and problem solving in actual ecosystems and places.