Elizabeth Allison
Program Chair
Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion
School of Consciousness and Transformation (SCT)
Associate Professor
Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness
School of Consciousness and Transformation (SCT)
PhD, University of California, Berkeley
MEM, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
MAR, Yale Divinity School
BA, Williams College
Elizabeth Allison, PhD, is a leader in the transdisciplinary field of Religion & Ecology. She studies the convergence of religion and ethics with environmental policy and practice, devoting particular attention to biodiversity, waste, ecological place, and climate change. She is Associate Professor of Ecology and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where she founded and chairs the graduate program in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion and created the Religion & Ecology Summit series of annual conferences. She is co-editor of After the Death of Nature: Carolyn Merchant and the Future of Human-Nature Relations, and has authored dozens of articles and chapters on environmental ethics, mountain socio-ecology, Buddhism, and waste, appearing in journals such as WIREs Climate Change, Religions, Mountain Research and Development, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, and in edited volumes on Bhutan, religion, nature, and geography. Her work on religious responses to climate change has been cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Earth Charter, and the World Bank’s Development Dialogue. A former Fulbright scholar in Nepal, she holds degrees in environmental management from the University of California - Berkeley and Yale University, and in religion from Yale and Williams College. Her current book project is The Topography of Karma: Religion, Environment, and Development in Modernizing Bhutan.
Elizabeth Allison's selected essays:
New research project: Life without Ice
The Reincarnation of Waste: A Case Study of Spiritual Ecology Activism for Household Solid Waste Management. in Religions 2019: 10(9)
Deity Citadels: Sacred Sites of Bio-Cultural Resistance and Resilience in Bhutan. Religions 2019: 10(4)
Race, Trauma, and Climate Change. Yale Divinity School's Reflections magazine 2019
Spirituality and Ecology, in The Routledge International Handbook of Spirituality in Society and the Professions, 2019.
Toward a Feminist Ethic of Care for Climate Change. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 2017: 33(2)
The Spiritual Significance of Glaciers in an Age of Climate Change. WIREs Climate Change 2015: 6(5)
"At the Boundary of Modernity: Religion, Technocracy, and Waste Management in Bhutan" in Megan Adamson Sijapati and Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz, eds. Religion and Modernity in the Himalaya. New York: Routledge, 2015. Find details on the "At the Boundary of Modernity: Religion, Technocracy, and Waste Management in Bhutan" book.
"Religion Inscribed in the Landscape: Sacred Sites, Local Deities and Natural Resource Use in the Himalayas" in Stanley D. Brun, ed. The Changing World Religion Map: Sacred Places, Identities, Practices and Politics. New York: Springer Publishing, 2015. Find details on the "Religion Inscribed in the Landscape: Sacred Sites, Local Deities and Natural Resource Use in the Himalayas" book.
Waste and Worldviews: Garbage and Pollution Challenges in Bhutan. The Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture 2014: 8(4).
