Leah Jones-Crank is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Environment (School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability) at the University of Waterloo.

As an interdisciplinary sustainability scholar, her research and teaching explores collaborative governance within the food-energy-water nexus for improved decision-making and for sustainable outcomes. She examines how such collaborative governance approaches can improve pathways to address challenges of drought and water stress in the face of climate change. Her work employs a variety of social science methods, including stakeholder engagement, case study investigation, institutional analysis, and qualitative inquiry. She focuses on urban spaces and has fieldwork experience in cities in the Southwestern US, South Africa, and Singapore.

Leah seeks to advance knowledge on cross-sectoral and nexus governance approaches and on how such collaborative governance connects to environmental and management outcomes, using interdisciplinary approaches. This research supports efforts for moving collaborative resource governance from theory to practice.