Research Overview

My core work focuses on private land conservation, with an aim to understand the experiences and perspectives of conservation landowners and the factors that influence decisions about conservation, such as motivations, values, and social context. I am also interested in rewilding, nature-based solutions, and restoring arid ecosystems.

Publications

Gooden, J. & Pritzlaff, R. 2021. Dryland watershed restoration with rock detention structures: A nature-based solution to mitigate drought, erosion, flooding, and atmospheric carbon. Frontiers in Environmental Science. doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2021.679189.

Gooden, J. & ’t Sas-Rolfes, M. 2019. A review of critical perspectives on private land conservation in academic literature. Ambio. doi.org/10.1007/s13280-019-01258-y.

Gooden, J. & Grenyer, R. 2019. The psychological appeal of owning private land for conservation. Conservation Biology 33(2): 339-350. doi:10.1111/cobi.1321.

Gooden, J. & Moir, F. 2019. Consensus, clusters, and trade-offs in wildlife-friendly ranching: An advance analysis of stakeholder goals in northern Mexico. Biological Conservation 236: 443-451. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2019.06.004.

Gooden, J. 2019. Cultivating identity through private land conservation. People and Nature. doi:10.1002/pan3.32.
Plain language summary: Nature reserve owners see themselves through the lens of their relationship with the land.

Gooden, J. 2019. Prudential value and the meaning of nature conservation. ECOS 40(2). British Association of Nature Conservationists, www.ecos.org.uk/ecos-402-prudential-value-and-the-meaning-of-nature-conservation/.

Root-Bernstein, M., Gooden, J., & Boyes, A. 2018. Rewilding in practice: Projects and policy. Geoforum. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.09.01.

Gooden, J. 2016. The red tape of rewilding. ECOS, 37(2), 11-18.

PhD Research

My DPhil (PhD) research was primarily rooted in conservation and psychology, though I also relied on theory and methods from finance, management, sociology, and economic geography. Epistemologically it was grounded in American pragmatism, and practically it was influenced by recent work on privately protected areas by the World Commission on Protected Areas.

My academic supervisors were Professor Gordon Clark and Professor Richard Grenyer.

MSc Research

In 2014 I received an MSc at the University of Oxford in Biodiversity, Conservation, and Management in the School of Geography and the Environment. My dissertation, The Red Tape of Rewilding, examined institutional barriers to the innovative conservation of wild lands, looking at rewilding sites in England, Wales, Scotland, and the Netherlands. My fieldwork took me to Alladale Wilderness Reserve, the Cairngorms, Trees for Life, Blaeneinion, Wild Ennerdale, Knepp Castle Estate, the Oostvaardersplassen, and Millingerwaard. My academic supervisor was Paul Jepson in the Conservation Governance Lab.

In addition to research, coursework included ecosystems, governance, economics, technology, social theory, and ethics. I also conducted an independent project cataloging osteological collections of birds and fishes at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Undergraduate (AB) Research

I began my studies with an AB in psychology from Harvard, where my honors thesis experimentally investigated the relationship between implicit attitudes and behavior.

I was advised by Nalini Ambady and Jennifer Richeson. My experiments used the Implicit Association Test, based on the work of Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald.