Biography

Elizabeth Allison, PhD, is a leader in the field of Religion & Ecology, and an environmental social scientist who studies the convergence of religion and ethics with environmental policy and practice.

She is 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 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 past Secretary (2021-2024) of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture.

Dr. Allison is co-editor of After the Death of Nature: Carolyn Merchant and the Future of Human-Nature Relations (2019). She is currently writing a book about how religion affects environmental policy and practice in Bhutan, as well as leading the social science component of the transdisiciplinary, transnational Life Without Ice research project exploring the consequences of glacier extinction with the Institute of Research for Development in France and other international partners. She researches traditional ecological knowledge in mountain regions, particularly as it relates to biodiversity, waste, ecological place, and climate change. Her articles appear in journals including 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.

A former Fulbright scholar in Nepal, she holds PhD and master’s degrees in environmental management from the University of California, Berkeley and Yale University, and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in religion from Yale Divinity School and Williams College.

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