I am a cultural anthropologist, political ecologist, and legal scholar studying human-environment relations in this time of environmental change and crisis. My research centers on how efforts to address linked environmental crises—like climate change and biodiversity loss—shape everyday life. I am interested in how these efforts shift people’s relationships with nature, including how they interact with, understand, value, and govern it. Topics of focus include efforts to protect and restore landscapes, make nature valuable, and create “green” economies, as well as related issues of environmental justice and land rights.

My published work has centered on green capitalism, carbon credits, deforestation, tree planting, postindustrial restoration, and energy transitions in Brazil, the US, and the UK. This work includes my first book—Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon—and collaborative work on energy justice in the United States and South America. My current research centers on tree planting and environmental restoration in postindustrial England.

I have a BA in Political Science from Yale University, a JD from New York University, and a PhD in Anthropology from Stanford University. Originally from Colorado, I now live in Hanover, NH with my husband and two children.