Rate My Professor Flora Lu

Flora Lu is the Pepper-Giberson Endowed Chair and Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she specializes in ecological anthropology. She also serves as Provost of College Nine and John R. Lewis College, a role she assumed in 2014. Lu holds an A.B. in Human Biology with honors from Stanford University (1993) and a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1999). Her early career accolades include the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, UNC Royster Society Fellowship, Lang Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University, and Stanford Distinguished Alumni Scholar designation. Joining UCSC in 2008, she has earned the Legacy Award from the UCSC Women's Gala (2025), Faculty Partner Award from the Division of Student Affairs and Success (2024), Chancellor's Achievement Award for Diversity (2016), UCSC Committee on Teaching Excellence in Teaching Award (2011), and Division of Social Sciences Golden Apple Distinguished Teaching Award (2010). She is affiliated with the Social Sciences Division, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, and the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas.

Lu's research examines human-environment interrelationships with emphasis on the Neotropics, particularly Ecuador's Amazon, focusing on indigenous resource use and management, biodiversity conservation, political ecology, environmental justice, household economics, market integration, culture change, common property regimes, conservation politics, and stewardship practices among groups such as the Huaorani, Cofán, and Shuar. Integrating social and natural sciences, her studies address land use, social change, cultural resilience, and socio-ecological impacts of oil extraction. Recent local work explores inclusivity in campus sustainability and Central Coast food justice. Principal investigator on grants exceeding $10 million from NSF, NIH, USDA, and others, key publications include the book Oil, Revolution, and Indigenous Citizenship in Ecuadorian Amazonia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, co-authored with Gabriela Valdivia and Néstor L. Silva); Critical Campus Sustainabilities: Bridging Social Justice and the Environment in Higher Education (Springer, 2023, co-edited with Emily Murai); Amazonian Conservation across Archipelagos of Indigenous Territories (Conservation Biology, 2025); Conservation and Care: Cofan Lessons for Stewarding Abundance in Amazonia (Human Ecology, 2024); and Shuar Women Confronting Extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon: A Feminist and Community-Centered Political Ecology (Journal of Latin American Geography, 2024). Her scholarship has garnered over 2,800 citations, influencing global discourses on indigenous conservation and equity.