Heather Leslie – Mitchell Center Leadership Council
Professor of Marine Sciences
Heather Leslie is a professor at the School of Marine Sciences, and has served as a faculty fellow with the Senator George J. Mitchell Center since 2017.
Leslie studies the interplay between marine ecosystems and people to inform policy and management. Her research group focuses on marine conservation science, and both undergraduate and graduate students in the Leslie Lab employ a range of research approaches from the ecological and social sciences.Leslie focuses on community-engaged research, which connects scientific data and local knowledge.
Since 2019, Leslie and her students have been working with towns bordering the upper Damariscotta River estuary to co-develop new information in support of community-led shellfish management. They collect data about the river’s shellfish, including soft shell clams, razor clams, quahogs, mussels and oysters, in order to help support local decisions about license allocation and conservation activities. In addition to her work in coastal Maine, Leslie also conducts research on the human-environment connections of small-scale fisheries in northwest Mexico. Recent studies by Leslie Lab members on the coasts of Maine and Mexico have focused on the impacts of climate change and changing regulations on marine ecosystems, and how those changes in marine ecosystems subsequently influence social interactions.
Leslie has been interested in sustainability throughout her career. She sees UMaine as uniquely able to support and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration amongst a vibrant community of researchers, particularly through the Mitchell Center. As a member of the Mitchell Center Leadership Council, Leslie hopes to continue supporting opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to get involved in interdisciplinary and community-engaged research, both locally and beyond Maine. As former director of UMaine’s marine laboratory, Darling Marine Center, Leslie has experience in building and supporting academic programs as an administrator as well as a faculty leader and mentor.
Leslie is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a Leopold Leadership Fellow, and Storymaker Fellow and is deeply committed to sharing stories of science with academic and public audiences, and ensuring that equity and inclusion are foregrounded in conservation education and workforce development. Much of her current efforts in this area are focused on the NSF-funded 3-D Ecosystem Science National Graduate Training Program that was launched at UMaine in 2023. She also serves as vice chair of the Board of Trustees of The Nature Conservancy in Maine.