Bianca Malkoc is a PhD student and Presidential Fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina. As a human-environment geographer and political ecologist, her research is concerned with how informal communities in coastal regions of sub-Saharan Africa navigate changes to their environment as a result of infrastructure and technology development. She earned her M.A. in Geography at the University of Oregon and B.A. in Geography/ Environmental Studies at UCLA, and have conducted qualitative and quantitative fieldwork in the U.S., Ghana, Botswana, and Australia. Prior to graduate school, she was an AmeriCorps Member at the American Red Cross.

Malkoc's responsibilities for Theme 3 include collecting and analyzing data in the form of document analysis, interviews, focus groups, and archival research.