Davin Holen

Focus

As the Alaska Sea Grant Coastal Community Resilience Specialist, Davin provides expertise, research, and extension services to communities across Alaska. Davin facilitates workshops and other activities by building trusted collaborations to provide data and decision support tools to Alaskans to adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions, build resilience, and enhance community well-being. Davin co-developed the Adapt Alaska website, which provides a resilience and adaptation planning guide paired with case examples and resources. The website is hosted by Alaska Sea Grant.

Expertise

Davin facilitates workshops and other activities related to coastal resilience, addressing monitoring, mitigation, resilience, and adaptation to enhance community well-being, health, economics, workforce development, and other aspects that make communities more resilient. Davin also conducts collaborative research projects that inform extension, outreach, and education activities in coastal Alaska communities. Before joining Alaska Sea Grant, Davin spent 15 years at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game conducting social-science research and managing the subsistence program in Southern Alaska. Davin has also been an adjunct professor of anthropology since 2003 at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA). Davin, a lifelong Alaskan from the Susitna Valley, graduated from UAA with a degree in history, then spent two years in Mali, West Africa, conducting natural resource management development work in the Peace Corps before returning to UAA to earn an MA in applied cultural anthropology, the first graduate of this degree program. Davin received a Ph.D. in anthropology from UAF in 2017. His dissertation, as well as his current work, examines the societal and economic factors intertwined with climatic and environmental changes that influence subsistence economies crucial for culture in Alaskan communities.

Affiliations

Prince William Sound Regional Citizens Advisory Council, Scientific Advisory Committee
Collaborative Faculty, International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Anchorage
International Arctic Social Sciences Association
Society for Applied Anthropology, Fellow
Alaska Anthropological Association

Current project websites

Adapt Alaska adaptalaska.org
Pursuing Opportunities for Long-Term Arctic Resilience for Infrastructure and Society arcticpolaris.org
People on the Move in a Changing Climate pemocc.org
WAGE Circumpolar Partnership www.wage.ulaval.ca

Recent publications

In Press. Mucioki, Megan; Baumflek, Michelle; Greenlaw, Suzanne; Aderman, Helen; McCovey, Kathy; Sowerwine, Jennifer; Lake, Frank; Holen, Davin; Sarna-Wojcicki, Daniel; Powell, Bronwen. Centering care as part of Indigenous environmental stewardship: collective learning through cultural plants. People and Nature.

In Press. Mucioki, M., B. Powell, R. Buzard, C. Paniyak, R. Tuluk, J. Wilde, M. Letzring, D. Holen, C. Ferguson, G. Chi, L. Howe and C. Maio. Merbok was a good thing and a bad thing’: Place-based systems of resilience in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta, Alaska. Ecology and Society.

2025. Davin Holen, Sean Kelly, Thomas F. Thornton, Ayse Akyildiz, Joshua Greenburg, Joseph Little, Jeremy Bridger, Birger Poppel, Ellen Inga Turi, Anders Oskal, Svein Disch Mathiesen, Inger Marie G. Eira, Kathrine I. Johnsen, Merritt Turetsky, Marina Tonkopeeva and Iulie Aslaksen. Interdependency of traditional and market economies in the Arctic In The Economy of the North 2025. Solveig Glomsrød, Gérard Duhaime, and Iulie Aslaksen, eds. Arctic Council Secretariat. https://oaarchive.arctic-council.org/items/d7c37504-e348-4a82-a856-baa6b15a1c15

2024. Mucioki, M., S. Kelly, D. Holen, B. Powell, T. Galbreath, S. Paterno, R. Mixon and G. Chi. Gardening practices in Alaska build on traditional food system foundations. Agriculture and Human Values. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-024-10652-6

2024. Taylor P. van Doren, Ryan A. Brown, Guangqing Chi, Patricia Cochran, Katie Cueva, Laura Eichelberger, Ruby Fried^,Stacey Fritz, Micah B. Hahn, Ron Heintz, Davin Holen, Noor Johnson, Josée Lavoie, Emily Maxwell, Lisa McNair, Todd Nicewonger, Robert W. Orttung, Andrey N. Petrov, James E. Powell. Beyond COVID: Towards a transdisciplinary synthesis for understanding responses and developing pandemic preparedness in the Circumpolar North. Journal of Circumpolar Health. 83(1): 2404273. https://doi.org/10.1080/22423982.2024.2404273

2024. Holen, Davin, and Danielle Verna. Building Collaborative Social Science Research Models to Understand the Social, Cultural, and Economic Impacts of Spills. International Oil Spill Conference Proceedings (2024) (1). https://doi.org/10.7901/2169-3358-2024.1.305

2024. Behl, M., J. Harrison, M. Walton, C. Riseng, D. M. Peroff, H. Meltzer, E. Maung-Douglass, S. Lovelace, S. J. Lake, M. Kennedy, S. Kolesar, D. Holen, G. Giannico, K. DeMeester, B. Carney, L. Chilton and M. Bethel. Sea Grant’s Community Engaged Internship: expanding participation and cultivating belonging in coastal and ocean sciences. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-024-00943-z

2024. Chi, Guangqing, Shuai Zhou, Megan Mucioki, Jessica Miller, Ekrem Korkut, E. Lance Howe, Junjun Yin, Davin Holen, Heather Randell, Ayse Akyildiz, Kathleen E. Halvorsen, Lara Fowler, James Ford, and Ann Tickamyer. Climate impacts on migration in the Arctic North America: Existing evidence and research recommendations. Regional Environmental Change, 24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-024-02212-9

2024. Smith, Morrison Luke, Guangqing Chi, Hannah Hennighausen, Davin Holen, E. Lance Howe. Differences in perceptions of COVID-19 risks in a fishing community in Alaska, 2020-2021. Marine Policy. 161 106045. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2024.106045

2023. Kettle, Nathan P., Hendricks, Amy, Sheffield Guy, Lisa, Lee, Olivia, Metcalf, Vera, & Holen, Davin. Climate services in a rapidly changing environment: an evaluation of the Sea Ice for Walrus Outlook (SIWO). Polar Geography, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1088937X.2023.2286383

2023. Davin Holen, E. Lance Howe, and Guangqing Chi. Fishing in the time of COVID: Assessing risk in the Bristol Bay commercial salmon fishery and the societal benefits of social science research. Arctic Yearbook. Special Issue: Arctic Pandemics. https://arcticyearbook.com/arctic-yearbook/2023-special-issue

2023. Nathan P. Kettle, Sarah F. Trainor, Renee Edwards, Donald Antrobus, Curt Baranowski, Tina Buxbaum, Kevin Berry, Michael Brubaker, Kristine L. DeLong, Steve Fries, Davin Holen, Barry Keim, Danielle Meeker, Harry Penn, Cheryl Rosa, Rick Thoman, John Walsh, Jian Zhang. Building resilience to extreme weather and climate events in the rural water and wastewater sectors. Journal of the American Water Resources Association. 10.1111/1752-1688.13151

2022. Ekrem Korkut, Lara B. Fowler, Kathleen E. Halvorsen, Davin Holen, E. Lance Howe, Guangqing Chi. Addressing Climate Impacts in Alaska Native Tribes: Legal Barriers for Community Relocation due to Thawing Permafrost and Coastal Erosion. Journal of Environmental Law and Policy. Volume 40, Issue 2.

2022. Wilson, Sacoby, Helen Cheng, Davin Holen, Erin Ling, Daphne Pee, and Andrew Lazur. An introduction to environmental justice and extension programs engaging vulnerable communities In Striving for grassroots engagement: Community education, social justice, cultural competence, and the role of cooperative extension. Michigan State University Press. https://msupress.org/9781611864274/grassroots-engagement-and-social-justice-through-cooperative-extension/

Hobbies

I grew up in Anchorage and the Susitna Valley. Both have some of the best trails anywhere for skiing, running, and riding mountain and snow bikes. I divide my time between Anchorage and Talkeetna and enjoy doing these activities with my family and our dogs.