Biography

Laura Pustarfi is a lecturer in Philosophy and Religion and Director of the Psychedelic Certificate Program at CIIS. She teaches in both the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion program as well as in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program. Her scholarly work examines trees and plants in Western thought with particular focus on an arboreal and vegetal ontology and ethics that respects plants themselves. 

Her professional background includes events and project management, research, analysis, and writing for both business and non-profit organizations. As the Director of the Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research Certificate Program, she manages communications, educational and technological administration, and certificate program operations. 

She is co-editor with Dr. David Macauley of the volume The Wisdom of Trees: Thinking Through Arboreality, published by SUNY Press in June 2025. Laura has presented at academic conferences nationally and internationally including those of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy (IAEP), TORCH Oxford, the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition (PACT), the International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE), the Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research (ICPR), and Awareness Lectures on Psychedelic Science (ALPS). She is on the board of The Plant Initiative, an associate editor of the Plant Perspectives journal, and she also has an enduring interest in the arts.
 

Education

M.A. with a concentration in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness, CIIS

Ph.D. with a concentration in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion, CIIS

Publications

The Quest for Integral Ecology

Arboreality and the Ethics of Standing in Place, chapter in The Vegetal Turn

The Wisdom of Trees: Thinking Through Arboreality, co-edited with David Macauley

"Skin Contains Land and Birds": Understanding inner healing intelligence through critical vitalism and Indigenous thought, co-authored with Keith Williams and Andrée-Anne Bédard