People

Phaedra C. Pezzullo 

(Fay-dra See Pet-zull-o, she/her, PhD, MA, BA, BS)

SAS Lab Director, Professor

Phaedra began professionally advising and publishing on sustainability and stories while working on her master’s thesis in Warren County, North Carolina, in the 1990s, when the community lobbied to clean the toxic landfill credited for sparking the environmental justice movement. In the decades since, she has worked with many to provide expertise, facilitations and capacity building for not only frontline/fenceline communities, but also students, educators, government employees, journalists, media creatives, nonprofit organizers and scientists. Her latest award-winning book, Beyond Strawmen: Plastic Pollution, Impure Politics, and Networked Cultures of Care (University of California Press, 2023), draws on interviews with international headline-making advocates you can hear on her podcast, Communicating Care. But, she wears many hats: Phaedra currently is founding co-editor of the University of California Press book series Environmental Communication, Power and Culture, editor of the international journal Environmental Communication and co-director of the graduate certificate in environmental justice, among others. Visit her website for more on her award-winning teaching, publishing and service.