Flora E Lu
· Professor, Environmental StudiesUniversity of California, Santa Cruz · Environmental Studies
Active 1997–2025
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About
Flora E Lu is a Professor in the Environmental Studies Division within the Social Sciences Division at UC Santa Cruz. Her academic background includes an A.B. in Human Biology from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Ecology from UNC-Chapel Hill. Her research specializes in ecological anthropology, human ecology of the Amazon, and issues related to conservation, environmental justice, indigenous resource use, and social change in Latin America, particularly Ecuador. She integrates social and natural science approaches to study resource use and conservation among indigenous peoples, focusing on land use, cultural resilience, and household economic strategies. Her theoretical frameworks encompass ecological anthropology, political ecology, and human ecology, with research topics including common property regimes, conservation politics, environmental justice, indigenous resource management, and household economics. Flora's work emphasizes the interrelationships between human societies and the natural environment, with a geographic emphasis on the Neotropics, especially the Amazon rainforest. She has contributed to understanding indigenous land use, resource management, and the socio-political dimensions of environmental issues, and she has been recognized with numerous awards and grants for her research and community engagement efforts.
Research topics
- Sociology
- Social Science
- Political Science
- Environmental ethics
- Aesthetics
- Epistemology
- Computer Science
- Anthropology
- Pedagogy
- Law
Selected publications
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability · 2021 · 73 citations
If the success of agricultural intensification continues to rely on the depletion of aquifers and exploitation of (female) labour, transformations to groundwater sustainability will be impossible to achieve. Hence, the development of new groundwater imaginaries, based on alternative ways of organizing society-water relations is highly important. This paper argues that a comparative documentation of grass-roots initiatives to care for, share or recharge aquifers in places with acute resource pres…
Environment and Planning E Nature and Space · 2020 · 39 citations
This multi-authored collection of papers examines the complex realities of research on natural resource industries, including the messy entanglements of extraction, materiality, and everyday social life this research entails. Of central importance to the contributors is how scholars confront fieldwork challenges ethically, methodologically, and corporeally. The collection has two key objectives. First, it expands our understanding of extractive industry by bringing together work on resources con…
Beyond Inclusion: Cultivating a Critical Sense of Belonging through Community-Engaged Research
Social Sciences · 2022 · 20 citations
A broad body of literature outlines the interventions to support underrepresented and minoritized students’ inclusion and sense of belonging into university contexts. In this paper, we explore how two first-generation students of color articulate a critical sense of belonging through their reflections as student researchers in the Apprenticeship in Community-Engaged Research or (H)ACER program at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). (H)ACER integrates community engagement, ethnograph…
Building more epistemically inclusive and environmentally equitable universities
Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences · 2024-05-29 · 9 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingAbstract Higher educational institutions tend to draw from mainstream approaches to environmentalism that reinforce race, class, and gender hierarchies around who constitutes “an environmentalist” and what activities constitute “environmentalism.” As a result, students of color and students from other marginalized backgrounds who often experience environmental degradation and catastrophe firsthand do not often see their experiences reflected in universities’ environmental programming, curricula,…
Amazonian conservation across archipelagos of Indigenous territories
Conservation Biology · 2024-10-22 · 5 citations
articleOpen accessSenior authorIndigenous stewardship is essential to the conservation of biocultural diversity, yet conventional conservation models often treat Indigenous territories (ITs) as homogeneous or isolated units. We propose that archipelagos of Indigenous territories (AITs), clusters of ITs that span geographies but are connected through shared cultural or political ties maintained by Indigenous nations, are crucial for understanding and enhancing conservation strategies that recognize the complexity of Indigenous…
Recent grants
A Cross-Cultural Study of Integration to the Market and Indigenous Health in the Ecuadorian Amazon
NSF · $260k · 2008–2012
Biocultural Heritage and Social-Ecological Resilience
NSF · $74k · 2022–2023
NSF · $93k · 2013–2018
Frequent coauthors
- 19 shared
Gabriela Valdivia
- 12 shared
Néstor L. Silva
- 11 shared
Michael S. Esbach
Colorado State University
- 5 shared
Kati Álvarez
- 4 shared
Ben Crow
- 4 shared
Mark Sorensen
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- 4 shared
Richard E. Bilsborrow
- 3 shared
Joel E. Correia
Colorado State University
Awards & honors
- Legacy Award, Women's Gala Award Ceremony, UCSC, March 2025
- Faculty Partner Award, Division of Student Affairs and Succe…
- Featured in the Los Angeles Times Diversity, Equity, Inclusi…
- Finalist, Racial Equity and Sustainability Collaborations Aw…
- Best Practice Award in Social Equity & Justice, CHESC (for U…
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