Sarah Juster
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Sarah Juster is a Ph.D. candidate in Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation (FREC) at Virginia Tech and a Ph.D. Fellow with CIFOR-ICRAF. Sarah’s work focuses on agroforestry and forest-based livelihood systems in refugee-hosting Uganda, where she applies mixed methods, including participatory mapping, Q-methodology, and geospatial analysis, to understand forest resource access, agroforestry preferences, and refugee/host non-timber forest product ethnobotany.
Sarah’s work has been supported by the U.S. Fulbright program, the National Science Foundation, Virginia Tech’s Global Change Center, and she was named the FREC A.B. Massey Outstanding PhD Student of the Year (2025).
Education
- Ph.D. Candidate, Virginia Tech
- MSW, University of Maine
- BSW, University of Maine
Teaching Assistant, Agroforestry Practices and Principles (Fall 2023 & 2025)
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
- Assisted with grading, field trip supervision, and provided student mentorship.
Teaching Assistant, Human-Environmental Systems (Spring 2024)
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
- Assisted with grading and lab leadership.
Teaching Assistant, Introduction to Land and Field Measurements (Fall 2022)
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
- Assisted with grading and conducting field-based lab sessions.
- Tree-based intervention strategy comparison and design in refugee displacement settings
- Examining refugee/host forest-based livelihoods, NTFP collection patterns and constraints
- Developing participatory/visual evaluation methods for household-level agroforestry programming
- Juster, S. H., Munsell, J. F., Okia, C. A., and Njenga, M. (2025). Tree-based intervention typologies and improvements in refugee displacement regions. International Journal of Population Studies. 025220105. https://doi.org/10.36922/IJPS025220105
- Juster, S. H., Munsell, J. F., and Njenga, M. (2025). Refugee women grow trees to protect people and forests in northwest Uganda. Tropical Forest Issues #63. https://www.tropenbos.org/resources/publications/4.4+refugee+women+grow+trees+to+protect+people+and+forests+in+northwest+uganda+(tfi63)
- Juster, S. H. (2025). Evaluative report on CIFOR-ICRAF programming with refugees and hosts in northwestern Uganda. Technical report. Bogor, Indonesia: CIFOR; Nairobi, Kenya: ICRAF. www.cifor-icraf.org/publications/pdf/reports/Evaluative-report-Uganda.pdf
- Juster, S. H. (2023, May 18). Glimpses of ordinary, everyday life in the Imvepi and Rhino Camp refugee settlements. Directions in Displacement. Blog post. https://blogs.tlos.vt.edu/directionsindisplacement/2023/05/18/glimpses-of-ordinary-everyday-life-in-the-imvepi-and-rhino-camp-refugee-settlements/
- Juster, S. H. (2023, February 15). Countering deforestation in the Imvepi Settlement, Uganda. Food, Water & Communities. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/91b2273c2c7448178abd801db9fe3ab4