Dr. Leila M. Harris is a Professor at the Institute for Resources Environment and Sustainability (IRES) and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice (GRSJ) at the University of British Columbia. She also serves as Co-Director for UBC’s Program on Water Governance, is a member of the EDGES research collaborative (Environment and Development: Gender, Equity, and Sustainability Perspectives), and is an Associate of the Department of Geography, and the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC.

Professor Harris’s work examines social, cultural, political-economic, institutional and equity dimensions of environmental and resource issues. Her current research focuses on the intersection of environmental issues and inequality / social difference, water governance shifts (e.g. marketization, participatory governance), in addition to conducting a multi-sited analysis of the non-material dimensions of water insecurity, highlighting themes such as emotions, trust, senses of belonging and state legitimacy (e.g. South Africa, Brazil, and Canada).

Professor Harris also served as principal investigator for the SSHRC-funded International WaTERS Research and Training Network focused on water governance, equity and resilience in the Global South.