Marty received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on developing an understanding of how ecological, behavioural, social and institutional factors affect the robustness and vulnerability characteristics of coupled social-ecological systems. His work combines qualitative insights from present-day, historical and archaeological case studies of social-ecological systems with formal mathematical modelling and experiments with human subjects. It explores how individual decision-making processes interact with governance regimes to influence social and environmental outcomes.