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Nicholas School of the Environment Ph.D. candidate Gabriela Nagle Alverio and Ph.D. student Basil Senso are the 2026 recipients of the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Graduate ���Ĵ�ý Manuscript. Each year, faculty members nominate manuscripts for consideration by Stanback Dean Lori Bennear.

“At the Nicholas School, we’re not in the business of easy questions, and these papers prove it. They take on climate migration and disease in complex ecosystems — the kind of problems that defy simple solutions — and show how rigorous, thoughtful work can still bring clarity,” Bennear said.

Bennear will honor the awardees at the Nicholas School’s Ph.D. graduate student recognition ceremony, which begins at 10 a.m. Friday, May 8, in Love Auditorium, within the Levine Science Research Center at Duke. For information about Nicholas School recognition ceremonies, visit the schedule of events.

Exploring Legal Pathways for Protecting Climate Migrants

Nagle Alverio, who will graduate this spring from the University Program in Environmental Policy (UPEP), was advised by Erika Weinthal, John O. Blackburn Distinguished Professor at the Nicholas School, and Sarah Bermeo, an associate professor of political science in the Sanford School of Public Policy. Nagle Alverio also earned a J.D. from Duke Law in 2025.

Her winning paper, “Protecting Climate Migrants,” has been accepted for publication in The Environmental Law Reporter, one of the longest-running and most prominent environmental law journals.

“The article is methodologically rigorous in its comparative legal analysis and deeply grounded in the empirical realities of climate displacement that Gabriela has studied throughout her doctoral research, including original fieldwork in Guatemala,” according to the nomination letter.

Impacts from climate change are already forcing some communities from their homelands, and the next 25 years could see hundreds of millions of climate migrants. Although most will remain within national borders, a portion of migrants will cross into nations where they have no legal protections.

Some advocates have attempted to expand protections for climate-displaced individuals, but a robust analysis of outcomes and successful strategies has been lacking. Nagle Alverio’s paper fills that gap.

Drawing on two comprehensive legal databases of climate migration cases, Nagle Alverio examined 31 decisions spanning six continents and more than a dozen legal systems to map available legal pathways for climate-displaced people.

The analysis reveals that promising pathways have evolved amid obstacles. Notably, judicial doctrine has shifted in ways that could benefit climate migrants, according to the findings.

The paper also provides a framework for advocates working to further expand legal protections for climate-displaced people.

“The article is the scholarly backbone of an emerging infrastructure for climate migration law,” the nomination letter noted. “That combination of disciplinary rigor, originality and real-world consequence is exactly what [the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Graduate ���Ĵ�ý Manuscript] is designed to recognize.”

Investigating Drivers of Parasitic Infection in African Antelopes

Senso, a first-year Ph.D. student in the Environment (ENV) program, is advised by assistant professor Jason Donaldson. Senso published his winning paper, “,” in the International Journal for Parasitology this past January.

“Basil’s manuscript represents an exceptional contribution to the field of disease ecology and exemplifies the Nicholas School’s strengths in climate, ecology and health research,” according to the nomination letter.

Parasitic diseases play an important role in ecosystems by affecting host behavior, fitness and population dynamics. Although seasonality often corresponds with parasite infection patterns, the underlying drivers are poorly understood.

For his study, Senso examined how environmental variability and parasite development relate to parasite infection in African antelopes. He focused on two types of parasites with different life cycles: an intestinal parasite that relies on a single host, and a lungworm that needs two hosts to complete its life cycle.

Combining field work, remote-sensing data and advanced statistical modeling, Senso found that intestinal parasite infections in antelopes peaked during the wet season, while lungworm infections peaked in the dry season. Lungworm infections were also strongly associated with precipitation and antelope population size. By contrast, intestinal parasite infections showed only weak associations with environmental factors.

The findings indicate that environmental drivers alone are insufficient to predict parasitic disease dynamics without accounting for parasite life cycles.

“Basil’s study provides a major conceptual advance by demonstrating that parasite life-history traits mediate how environmental conditions translate into infection risk,” the nomination letter noted. “This comparative, mechanism-focused approach is both innovative and broadly applicable, with clear implications for understanding disease dynamics under climate change, managing wildlife health and predicting zoonotic risks [risks of disease transmission between animals].”