Jessie Luna

Jessie Luna is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University, specializing in Environmental Sociology, Race, Food and Agriculture, and Political Ecology. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Boulder and a M.A. in Global Ecology from the Graduate Institute in Geneva. Her research examines intersections of capitalism, racial projects, and environmental change, particularly in West African contexts like Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire.

Her work critiques modernity's impact on rural dispossession through studies of cotton farming, pesticide use, and agrochemical dependency. She also explores embodied neoliberalism via Rocky Mountain fun runners and racialized representations in conservation spaces. Luna has served as an editor for the Journal of Agrarian Change since 2024 and teaches courses on environmental justice, race, and science-society relations.

Research highlights include analyzing Bt cotton controversies, pesticide cultural impacts, and zoo representations of Africa. Her writing appears in top journals like World Development and Qualitative Sociology.

• Awards: 2024 Provost's Teaching Scholar; 2023 College of Liberal Arts Excellence in Teaching Award
• Grants: Active research on pesticides in Côte d'Ivoire
• Labs/Teams: Collaborations with West African agricultural communities and global agrarian change networks