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Huggins is an interdisciplinary groundwater scientist who works at the interface of hydrology, ecology, and sustainability science.
His research frames freshwater systems as embedded within social-ecological and Earth systems, and focuses on better understanding the role of groundwater in ecological resilience, social well-being, and how interactions can inform freshwater sustainability pathways. More broadly, his work applies complexity science principles to freshwater research topics, drawing also on resilience theory and system dynamics methods. He is also interested in characterizing holistic social, economic, and biophysical system archetypes to develop bounded theories of change for social-ecological system transitions.
He earned his PhD from the University of Victoria (Canada) while a member of the Global Institute for Water Security. His PhD work, in which he developed the framing of ‘groundwater-connected systems’ to enable a social-ecological turn in quantitative groundwater science and then applied this framing in various global-scale assessments, was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal and the Distinguished Dissertation Award from the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies and Proquest. His work has also been recognized with the Mikhalevich Award from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University. Supported by fellowships from NSERC (Canada), the Killam Trusts, and the Canadian Space Agency, his postdoctoral work investigates the resilience of groundwater-dependent ecosystems worldwide groundwater storage trends across land use and socioeconomic contexts.
He co-leads the Global Freshwater Systems Science Workshop, a participatory collective of interdisciplinary freshwater scientists that is principally supported by the Stockholm Resilience Centre. The workshop brings together a community of freshwater scientists from institutions across Sweden, Finland, Germany, and the Netherlands that share common interests in understanding large-scale interconnections between humans, ecosystems, Earth systems, and freshwater systems. More information about the workshop can be found on its webpage.
