Wednesday 22 April 2026, 15:00-16:00 CET
Join us for a discussion on Trust, identity and place-based environmental governance, a chapter by Marc J. Stern and Dara M. Wald in the Handbook on Trust in Public Governance (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025).
In this webinar, Marc J. Stern and Dara M. Wald will present key insights from their chapter "Trust, identity and place-based environmental governance" in the Handbook on Trust in Public Governance. They explore the complex challenge of establishing, maintaining, and rebuilding trust in place-based environmental governance, highlighting identity threats as a critical and often overlooked barrier. They show how trust and identity are deeply interconnected and multi-faceted, shaping governance processes and outcomes through multiple pathways. They argue that individuals interpret and respond to trust signals through the lens of their identities, making identity-based evaluations central to both trust-building and distrust. Because identity threats and distrust can re-emerge at any stage, Stern and Wald emphasize the importance of designing decision-making processes that incorporate multiple, adaptive trust-management strategies. They underscore the need to cultivate an identity-protective culture and to avoid mismatched trust signals.
Webinar programme
- 15:00 | Welcome and introduction by Esther Van Zimmeren (University of Antwerp, GOVTRUST Centre of Excellence)
- 15:10 | Takeaways from the chapter "Trust, identity and place-based environmental governance" by Marc J. Stern and Dara M. Wald (Virginia Tech University)
- 15:40 | Q&A
Speaker bios
- Marc J. Stern is a Professor in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation at Virginia Tech, where he teaches courses in Environmental Communication, Environmental Education, Human Dimensions of Natural Resource Management, Social Science Research Methods, and Sustainability. His research and scholarship focus on human behaviour in a wide array of contexts, including informal education, environmental communication, natural resource management, environmental conflict, and sustainability.
- Dara M. Wald is an Associate Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech University. She is also a research fellow in the Institute for Science Technology and Public Policy in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Broadly, Wald’s scholarship focuses on the challenge of translating scientific knowledge into action to maximize the benefits of scientific discovery for people and the environment. Her research combines theory from psychology and policy to examine how trust, values, and power emerge, differ among audiences, and shape communication, collaborative processes, and policy outcomes in polarised environmental contexts.
Practical information
- 📅 Date & time – Wednesday, 22 April 2026, 15:00-16:00 CET
- 💻 Join online, via Microsoft Teams – 👉 Join link
or copy paste the following URL in your browser: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/35904726857006?p=6YYjTguqGwj5YL7YXQ - 🎥 Recording – The webinar will be recorded and made available on this webpage after the webinar.
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