Rate My Professor Laura Zanotti

Laura Zanotti serves as Professor and Director of the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Cincinnati. She holds a PhD and MA in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Washington and a BA summa cum laude in Anthropology and English/Creative Writing from Colgate University. Prior to joining UC in 2024, she was Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University from 2009 to 2024, where she also served as Graduate Director of the Anthropology Department (2019-2022, 2024), Associate Director of the Center for the Environment (2019-2020), and Convener of Building Sustainable Communities (2014-2020). Additional roles at Purdue included affiliate faculty in the Institute for a Sustainable Future, Ecological Sciences and Engineering, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Latin American and Latino Studies, and Digital Humanities.

Zanotti's research focuses on sustainability and feminist political ecology, including media and environment, Indigenous rights, global environmental governance, environmental justice, visual and sensory methodologies, collaborative research and praxis, climate change, and critical data studies. With more than two decades of experience, she partners with Indigenous Peoples such as the Mebêngôkre-Kayapó in Brazil and local communities worldwide to foster sustainable livelihoods, well-being, and self-determination through transdisciplinary projects and mixed methods ethnographic teams. Her book is Radical Territories in the Brazilian Amazon: The Kayapó’s Fight for Just Livelihoods (University of Arizona Press, 2016). Key publications include "The relationship between household structures and everyday adaptation and livelihood strategies in northwestern Pakistan" (Ecology and Society, 2023), "Doing Feminist Collaborative Event Ethnography" (Journal of Political Ecology, 2020), "Sustainability, resilience, adaptation, and transformation: tensions and plural approaches" (Ecology and Society, 2020), and "Comparison of Direct Transfers for Human Capital Development and Environmental Conservation" (World Development, 2017). She has received the Fulbright Specialist Program roster (2022-2025), Fellowship in the Society for Applied Anthropology (2012-present), Purdue Faculty Scholar Award (2018-2023), Purdue CLA Excellence in Discovery and Creative Endeavors Award (2021), and several Purdue teaching and leadership awards. Currently, she is President-Elect of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America and a councilor for the National Sustainability Society.