Carina is an interdisciplinary social scientist with background in science and technology studies, and human ecology. Her research focuses on understanding how decisions are made in complex and contested environmental governance and management challenges. This entails research in three main areas:

• The processes and practices of collaboration across the science-policy-practice interface;
• The scientific and governance processes that underpin how land and water management agencies address environmental change;
• The capacities, methods, and practices that enable futures thinking in environmental decision-making. 

Carina's current research focuses on climate adaptation, water governance, and biodiversity conservation in the Murray-Darling Basin, the Australian Alps, and the Western United States. 

After completing her PhD at the ANU in 2013, Carina worked internationally, in the United States, Colombia and Switzerland, working with government and non-government organisations. Many of these collaborations directly contributed to management and policy at local, regional, and national scales of decision-making. Notably, Carina co-led the Biodiversity Revisited Initiative a two-year collaboration that involved over 300 contributors from 46 countries to critically examine the status of biodiversity research, policy, and practice. In 2022, she was awarded the Society for Conservation Biology's early career award for outstanding contribution to the conservation social sciences. 

Carina returned to the ANU in 2020 with an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award, which involves research on foresight practices and anticipatory governance to enable stakeholders to negotiate pathways for climate adaptation within water reform in the Murray Darling Basin. She is a contributor to the ANU High Country Research Initiative, where Carina’s research is examining how protected area management and policy is grappling with ecological transformation associated with snowgum die-back.