PhD Candidate, Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba
Olivia Sylvester is a University of Manitoba doctoral candidate who researches harvesting and human rights to foods in rainforests. For her Masters, she examined people’s access to wild foods in two Costa Rican national parks. For her Ph.D., she collaborated with an Indigenous rights organization (Centro Skõki) to develop a project that evaluated Bribri Indigenous rights to harvest forest foods and medicines within Costa Rica’s largest protected area. Olivia is a youth member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and a student representative of the International Society of Ethnobiology; within these networks, she works at the interface of policy and practice regarding biocultural issues. After her Ph.D., she plans to apply her background in ethnobotany and collaborative research to support human rights and Indigenous peoples’ food sovereignty goals.
