College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Community Sustainability

Advisor: Maria Claudi Lopez

I am a transdisciplinary sustainability scholar and critical systems thinker broadly interested in the field of transformations and environmental justice. My goal as a scholar is to co-create transformative research in collaboration with community partners that advances our collective understanding on how sustainability transformations happen or could happen, while also contributing to community-led change processes. I specialize in the design, facilitation and evaluation of transdisciplinary processes of knowledge co-production.

Due to my interdisciplinary background and diverse career trajectory, I have been able to conduct research across a diverse array topics and geographies. I have conducted and published research on energy transitions in the Brazilian Amazon, in collaboration with traditional and Indigenous communities and an NGO (Santarém, Pará); desirable futures for urban food systems, in collaboration with food systems leaders and practitioners (Flint, Michigan); governance of biodiversity and nature’s contribution to people, in collaboration with the management council of a peri-urban protected area (Campinas, São Paulo).

Being an educator is a key part of my professional identity. In CSUS, I taught “Theoretical Foundations of Sustainability” to majors of the Environmental Studies and Sustainability program during the Spring Semester 2025. I utilized project-based and active learning strategies, coupled with a flipped classroom format, to engage students and allow learners to explore their own topics of interest.

To learn more about me, visit my website: https://sites.google.com/view/rafael-lembi/

To consult my publication, visit my Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HeXetvIAAAAJ&hl=pt-BR  

Rafael's Graduate Work:

Currently, I am in the last year of my PhD at the Department of Community Sustainability, Michigan State University (defense expected in April-May 2026). My dissertation is based on community-engaged fieldwork I have conducted in the lower Tapajós River, Santarém, Brazilian Amazon, in collaboration with community leaders, NGO “Projeto Saúde e Alegria”, Renewable Enegy Lab at Federal University of Western Pará. I am examining energy transitions, analyzing how off-grid Indigenous and traditional communities experience access to photovoltaic energy systems, its impacts, and possibilities for more just and decolonial energy transitions. In addition, I am researching the social-ecological resilience of communities and households to an extreme drought that occurred during the dry season of 2024. To learn more about my dissertation work, watch this video, produced in partnership with Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtWs9ubw-wA&ab_channel=MSUCLACS