Nora Bynum, Ph.D, is the Director for Global Strategy in the Office of Global Strategy and Programs at Duke University. For the past 15 years, Nora has worked in international capacity building and training in the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Most recently, she was Associate Director for Capacity Development and Project Director of the Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners (NCEP, http://ncep.amnh.org) for the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History. In this position, she provided academic leadership and management to this international effort to produce and disseminate educational materials for formal and non-formal training in biodiversity conservation. Nora is also an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and at Duke University, where she has taught since 1995. Previously, Nora was a Fulbright lecturer at the Instituto de Ecología, A.C., in Xalapa, Mexico, where she taught courses on learner-centered methods of teaching conservation, and on global change. From 1998-2002, she was Academic Director for the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), where she designed, managed, and provided oversight for programs in tropical ecology for graduate students and undergraduates in Costa Rica, Peru and South Africa. Nora has conducted fieldwork in tropical forests in Indonesia, Peru, Costa Rica, and Mexico. Her current research interests are in seasonality and phenology of tropical canopy trees, particularly as it relates to global change, and the scholarship of teaching and learning, particularly in undergraduate and experiential contexts. She also serves as Chair of the Board of the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research (ACEER), and as Chair of the Education Committee for the Board of Governors of the Society for Conservation Biology. She received her PhD from Yale University in 1995 in Anthropology and Forestry and Environmental Studies, and her undergraduate degree in Anthropology from Duke University in 1985.

School Division

Environmental Sciences & Policy

Education

  • Ph.D., Yale University (1995)