Nusrat Molla joined Simon A. Levin and Elke U. Weber’s Labs in July 2023 as a Distinguished Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Andlinger Center. She completed her Ph.D. in Land, Air, and Water Resources at University of California, Davis, where she focused on combining dynamical systems modeling and qualitative data to understand the socio-political dynamics of transitions in how natural resources are extracted and governed. In addition to general models of how resource governance systems respond to change, this work involved a case study in California’s San Joaquin Valley to understand the implications of different strategies and narratives about water and agriculture for the power and vulnerability of different water users. Her current work centers on sustainability transitions, particularly in extractive industry-dependent communities. She is interested in how different forms of extraction and production shape development trajectories in the communities in which they are based through their influence on institutions, infrastructures, landscapes, and culture. She is exploring these questions through a general stylized model of the resource curse, and a case study in the coal mining region of Central Appalachia, where she conducted interviews and participatory modeling to explore post-coal futures. She also plans to conduct surveys in the region to explore belief networks around what constitutes a just transition. In the future, she hopes to develop theory about how the material – such as natural resources, infrastructures, and institutional structures – interact with the discursive – narratives, discourses, and belief systems – in enabling or constraining transformations.