Elizabeth Allison
Professor, Program Chair
Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion
Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness
School of Consciousness and Transformation
Pronouns: she/her
Email: eallison@ciis.edu
Research Interests
religion & ecology; environmental humanities; spiritual ecology; climate change; biodiversity collapse; traditional ecological knowledge; eco-spirituality; environmental ethics; political ecology; multi-species ontologies; Himalayan culture & religion; Buddhism
Biography
Elizabeth Allison, PhD, is an environmental social scientist who is Professor of Ecology and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, USA, where she founded and chairs the graduate program in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion and created the Religion & Ecology Summit series of conferences. She is a member of the Advisory Group for the Yale Forum on Religion & Ecology; an editorial board member for the journal Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology; and the Secretary of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture. Her current research projects address socio-spiritual implications of glacial extinction in high mountain regions; the expansion of care ethics to nonhuman nature; and the implications of Buddhism and indigenous mountain religions for biodiversity conservation and climate adaptation. Her scholarly articles appear in journals including Ecology & Society, WIREs Climate Change, Religions, Mountain Research and Development, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, and in numerous edited volumes on Bhutan, religion, nature, and geography. She is co-editor of After the Death of Nature: Carolyn Merchant and the Future of Human-Nature Relations. Her current book project is Tantric Ecologies: Religion, Environment, and Development in Modernizing Bhutan.
Education
Ph.D. UC Berkeley
MEM Yale School of the Environment
MAR Yale Divinity School
Courses
Science, Ecology and Contested Knowledge(s) Theory and Method in the Integrative Study of Religion & Ecology
Ecology in a Time of Planetary Crisis
Toward an Integral Ecological Consciousness
PCC and ESR MA Integrative Seminar
Next of Kin: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Animal Ethics
Environmental Ethics
Touch the Earth: The Integral Ecology Internship Seminar
Publications
Talks
ESR YouTube with a variety of talks to choose from, including most of the Religion & Ecology Summits that ESR has hosted.
Public talk: An Epistemological Expedition into Vertiginous Animate Terrain, 2024
Podcast: A Conversation with Merlin Sheldrake, 2023
Podcast: Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology
Podcast: Elizabeth Allison: On Ecology and Spirituality, 2020
Articles
See full list of articles here
The Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion Annual Summit Returns, 2025
The spiritual significance of glaciers in an age of climate change, 2015
A Decade of Earth-Centered Scholarship and Activism Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion at Ten, 2024
After the Death of Nature: Carolyn Merchant and the Future of Human-Nature Relations, 2019