Interdisciplinary Marine Early Career Network Newsletter
March 2022
Welcome to the latest issue of the Interdisciplinary Marine Early Career Network (IMECaN) newsletter!

If you are interested in providing ideas, contributing a story or being featured in the newsletter, contact us at imecan@dal.ca or @IMECAN4.

In this newsletter:
  • Help IMECaN meet your needs - IMECaN member survey
  • Interesting Reads: Diversity, equity, inclusion and justice
  • Welcome to the new members of IMECaN steering committee
  • IMECaN feature: Rasheed B. Adesina, a PhD student, writes from the Ocean College of Zhejiang University, Zhoushan, China
  • Upcoming events (conferences, workshops and symposiums)
  • Jobs and Opportunities
Help IMECaN meet your needs
To kick-start the New Year, we want to know what you as IMECaN members are looking for in the network and how we can develop our activities. Please take a moment to help us learn how we can best support you. The answers to those questions will help us understand our impact and improve and expand our programs.
 
If you have benefited from being part of the IMECaN, we would be very grateful if you would take just a couple of minutes to answer a short survey:
 
 
Your participation in the survey is completely voluntary, and you can withdraw from the survey at any time. In addition, you can select 'prefer not to say' or leave a blank answer for any question(s) you do not wish to answer. To ensure confidentiality, we have not asked for your name, email address or institution.
Interesting reads: Diversity, equity, inclusion and justice
Welcome to the new members of the IMECaN steering committee
We would like to welcome Shenghui Li and Ignacio Gianelli to IMECaN organising committee.
Shenghui Li is a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Oceanography, Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China. Her research interests are Marine Spatial Planning (MSP), Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and marine governance, with a particular focus on transboundary issues and multi-stakeholder collaboration. Shenghui is a member of the MSP Research Network and tries to make a contribution to MSP education and research. She is passionate about MSP's potential for coastal community resilience and regional marine governance under climate change.
 
Twitter: @Shenghui2018
Ignacio Gianell is a doctoral student at the EqualSea Lab at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. He is interested in marine social-ecological systems, fisheries management, the human dimension of fisheries, and the role of distal and proximate drivers in shaping human-oceans relationships. During his Ph.D., Ignacio will explore and foster transformative changes in marine social-ecological systems, particularly in small-scale fisheries. Using case studies in Uruguay and Spain, he will analyze how institutional factors and emergent processes from innovative sustainability initiatives in small-scale fisheries contribute to more sustainable trajectories for ocean-dependent communities. He aims to co-create transformative spaces in which to envision plural, possible and desirable futures for small-scale fisheries. His research involves epistemological agility, transdisciplinary networking, and the use of diverse tools to promote sustainability transformations in marine social-ecological systems.

Twitter: @IgnacioGianelli

Details about the other members of our organising Committee can be found here. See IMECaN’s background, aim, activities and mission, here. The network currently has 839 members from 88 countries. Click here to join us!
IMECaN feature: Rasheed B. Adesina, a PhD student, writes from the Ocean College of Zhejiang University, Zhoushan, China
As a native of a coastal city in a developing country, I have always marveled at the ocean owing to its blend of beauty, richness, and complexity. I began my journey in oceanography as a young academic at The Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria, after obtaining a master's degree in Geology. I've since been actively involved in teaching and research, especially in coastal and marine geology and integrated coastal zone management. I have come to terms that the marine environment is an area where much remains to be discovered, and only a multidisciplinary approach can cover the breadth of issues confronted. The increasing pressure on coastal zones calls for various stakeholders to understand the nexus between the environment and humans. In recent years, low-lying coastal cities, especially in the Gulf of Guinea in the North Atlantic are observed to have suffered from hazards due to the interplay between natural and anthropogenic factors. While conducting routine fieldwork at the Mahin mud coast of southwestern Nigeria, my interest in the dynamics of cohesive sediment was developed. In the realm of global climate change, and consequent sea-level rise, the muddy coastline is exposed to perennial flooding with attendant loss of property, livelihoods, and coastal habitats. This area, therefore, requires improved coastal engineering developments to forestall further coastal degradation. However, there is a serious dilemma as the proposed structures tend to have significant impacts on coastal habitats between the rising shoreline and the coastal defense structure. They also alter the natural hydrodynamic balance of the area, thereby placing the area to further risk.
To effectively manage the muddy coastline, it is crucial to understand the prevailing dynamics/natural processes to maximize the desired outcome of the study area, which are expected to be long lasting and adopted for many years into the future. All these challenges elicited my current research interest. In the autumn of 2018, I secured the Chinese Government Marine Scholarship to pursue a PhD degree at the Ocean College of the prestigious Zhejiang University, under the supervision of Professor He Zhiguo. My research seeks to understand the sediment properties of the Nigerian mud coast that influence their transport dynamics, with a view to model future changes arising from proposed engineering developments. The outcome of this study is expected to accurately predict the dynamics of fine-grained sediments in the Nigerian muddy coast and estuaries and forecast coastal geohazards in the area.
My journey to China has been adventurous both in the classroom and in my day-to-day activities. As an international student, I participated in research visits and conferences. My first encounter with IMBeR came in 2019 when I attended a doctoral forum jointly organized by the Chinese Scholarship Council and the East China Normal University. There, I interacted with IMBeR researchers from across the world, and I've since been following up on their activities relating to the coastal ocean.
Upcoming events (conferences, workshops and symposiums)

Jobs and opportunities



Share job opportunities with us by sending an e-mail to imecan@dal.ca or tweeting @IMECaN4
 imecan@dal.ca