Melissa Gonzalez

Melissa Gonzalez joined SEI Asia as a Research Associate in the Gender, Environment, and Justice (GenJust) Cluster in February 2026. Her role focuses on the integration of intersectional gender and human rights perspectives in different projects, collaborating with Clusters at our Centre, as well as other SEI Centres under the GESEP Community of Practice.

Before joining SEI Asia, Melissa worked at Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), a community development and design non-profit organization that partners with under-resourced communities to advance equity and activate the unrealized potential of their neighborhoods and cities. As part of the research team, she contributed to multiple action research projects across Kenya, focusing on themes including climate change, public health, urban space, and systemic risk. Her work involved extensive field engagement in informal settlements, where she led qualitative research, trained citizen scientists, and supported the translation of community knowledge into policy-oriented outputs. Before KDI, Melissa worked with UN-Habitat’s Regional Office for Africa in Nairobi, supporting programme development, resource mobilization, capacity-building and technical assistance for national and local governments, partnership-building, and regional strategy development.

Melissa holds an MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development from University College London (UCL). During her master’s degree, she conducted fieldwork in Bogotá, Colombia, focusing on collective spaces and environmental citizenship, which resulted in a published policy brief. Her master’s dissertation, “A Feminist Political Ecology and Environmental Justice Analysis of Carbon Offsetting Projects in the Global South,” was awarded a Bartlett Commendation. She also holds a BSc (Hons) in Earth, Energy and Sustainability from Leiden University College in The Hague.