Critical Campus Sustainabilities Bridging Social Justice and the Environment in Higher Education

Dr. Flora Lu is a Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz and an ecological anthropologist specializing in conservation politics, environmental justice, political ecology and Indigenous environmental stewardship. She served as the Provost of College Nine and John R. Lewis College from 2014 - 2023, during which time she helped establish the People of Color Sustainability Collective (PoCSC) and the Apprenticeship in Community Engaged Research or (H)ACER Program. She earned her doctorate in Ecology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her A.B. in Human Biology from Stanford University.

Dr. Emily Murai is a Lecturer in the Environmental Studies Department and College Nine at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA. She has been teaching courses in first-year writing, writing-across-the-curriculum/writing-in-the-disciplines (WAC/WID), and the environmental humanities/social sciences for more than two decades. She emphasizes holistic teaching and learning, innovative pedagogies and centering students’ backgrounds and lived experiences in her work. She holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Minnesota, an MA in Sociology from the New School for Social Research, and a BA in American Studies and Psychology from UC Santa Cruz.