Francis Commerçon
Francis Commerçon graduated with a Masters of Environmental Science from Yale School of the Environment in May 2023. His master’s research addressed the social processes behind migratory shorebird conservation science in the East Asian Australasian Flyway. He identified potential social patterns that shape how people share monitoring data, and his Fox Fellowship research will refine this theory with regard to Chinese waterbird conservation. He has also explored alternative non-population-based epistemologies for conservation priority-making. Francis also worked as a social data scientist for Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, where he published on message experiments and the effects of word choice on Americans’ climate-related feelings and beliefs. Francis majored in biological science and fish, wildlife, and conservation biology at Colorado State University and transitioned to social science during an honors undergraduate thesis on the human dimensions of illegal wildlife hunting in rural communities in southwestern China. He has published this work and is currently preparing a manuscript using data from a Fulbright Fellowship where he studied social network determinants of wild meat consumption in these same communities. He is dedicated to a research and teaching career that promotes epistemic and environmental justice as well as cross cultural understanding.