Gutberlet is an award-winning community engaged scholar and leads the Community-Based Research Laboratory at University of Victoria (UVic). For almost twenty years her research and practice focuses on interdisciplinary themes related to solid waste (including plastics) and sustainability in a broad global context.
She is interested in everyday livelihoods and development issues, related to waste governance particularly in the global South. She brings an overlapping socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental perspective and a participatory action-oriented approach to research that seeks to promote local livelihoods and a healthy global environment. Her research involves local participants which allows disenfranchised communities and individuals to use their agency to achieve greater social and environmental justice. Her present international project Mapping Waste Governance, collaborates in several countries in Latin America and Africa.
She has widely published on the social aspects related to waste, with the latest book on Urban Recycling Cooperatives: Building Resilient Communities, by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Currently, she is coordinating the creation of a university for and with waste pickers, in Brazil (UNICATA).
This page has been updated in June 2024.
