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A beautiful healthy vanilla vine, almost ready for harvest. Ambanitaza, Commune Ampahana, Dec. 2024.

RESEARCH PILLARS

TEACHING 
RESEARCH INTERESTS
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As a PhD student in Ecology with an emphasis in Agroecology and American-American & African Studies, I’m interested in the way past legacies of land use including colonialism, imperialism, conflict, resistance, agriculture, foraging, stewardship, and traditional and cultural practices have influenced environmental conditions and human-land relationships. The informational and material legacies of the past influence the present, and by negotiating the narratives and histories of a place we have the opportunity to reimagine more just and robust land futures. 
 
I am interested in transdisciplinary research because it spans many disciplines and seeks to create new bridges and necessary linkages between disciplines. I hope to build, create, and merge ideas from the great many authors, thinkers, and ancestors before me. The frameworks and concepts I find most influential to my thinking and research are:

  • Restoration Ecology
  • Biocultural Land Use History 
  • Oral Histories
  • Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge 
  • Social-Ecological Memory 
  • Agroecology and Multifunctional Land Use
  • Ethnoecology & Indigenous Political Ecology 
  • Integrated Landscape Management 
  • Social-Ecological Systems 
  • Participatory Community Action Research
  • Climate Change Adaptation & Resilience 

PUBLICATIONS

Fleming M. et al. (2025). Impact of price shocks and payments on crop diversification and forest use among Malagasy vanilla farmers. Biological Conservation, Volume (302). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110915

Buck L., Scherr S., Trujillo L., Mecham J., Fleming M. (2020). Using integrated landscape management to scale agroforestry: Examples from Ecuador. Sustainability Science Special Issue: Agroforestry for sustainable landscape management.

Fleming M and Davis V. (2020). The effect of soil degradation on the nutritional quality of food [working paper]. Catholic Relief Services: Baltimore.

Fleming M. (2020). An Analysis of Women-led Enterprises in the Mango Value Chain in Emerging Economies: Case Study of Azuri Health Ltd. In Thika, Kenya [master’s thesis]. Cornell University, Department of Global Development.


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