MICRO 2016: Fate and Impact of Microplastics in Marine Ecosystems (ePub)

commitment to collaborative, ethical, and interdisciplinary research to coordinate Marine Sciences For Society: a network of concerned scientists working to enhance the dialogue between marine scientists and society as a whole.

Bethany Jorgensen graduated from the University of Chicago in 2008 and is currently a graduate student at the University of Maine. She has been an editor for Marine Sciences For Society since 2009, and became a co-coordinator of the group in 2014.

Sabine Pahl is Associate Professor (Reader) in Psychology at Plymouth University. Her applied areas of interest are marine conservation, restorative environments and energy, especially the role of behaviour change. Sabine is part of a Southwest team that has demonstrated the psychological benefits of ‘blue space’ environments such as oceans, and the detrimental effect of marine litter. She was the lead social scientist in the MARLISCO project focused on Marine Litter in European Seas (marlisco.eu). The role of the Plymouth team was to evaluate science-in-society activities in 14 European countries plus Turkey, summarised in a guide for influencing behaviour. Sabine is one of only two social scientists involved in the United Nations GESAMP Working Group 40 on ocean microplastics, and the Phase 1 report contains recommendations for more behavioural science. Since 2010 Sabine has had research funding from various agencies including EPSRC, ESRC, FP7, DEFRA and H2020. She is the Secretary for the International Association of Applied Psychology’s Environmental Division and was the lead convenor for two sessions (behaviour change and perceptions of climate change) at the UNFCC COP21 science conference in Paris in July, which summarised the science to inform the COP 21 policy meeting in December this year.

Richard C. Thompson is a Professor at the Marine Biology and Ecology Research Centre School of Marine Science and Engineering at Plymouth University.

Jean-Paul Vanderlinden is a Professor of Environmental Studies and Ecological Economics at the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ). Additionally, he is the coordinator of the “Adaptation Research, a Trans-disciplinary Transnational Community and Policy Centred Approach project from the International Group of Funding Agencies for Global Change Research.