Kristina Lyons

Kristina Lyons is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the School of Arts and Sciences and the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH) at the University of Pennsylvania. She also holds affiliations with the Center for Experimental Ethnography (CEE) and the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies (CLALS).

Her research is situated at the interfaces of socio-ecological conflicts, social studies of science, and legal studies in Latin America. She has conducted extensive fieldwork across laboratories, greenhouses, forests, and farms in Bogotá and the Andean-Amazonian department of Putumayo, Colombia. Her book Vital Decomposition: Soil Practitioners and Life Politics (Duke University Press, 2020) explores the work of state soil scientists and small farmers attempting to cultivate alternatives to commercial coca crops.

Dr. Lyons' recent publications reveal a strong focus on environmental justice, socio-ecological memory, and climate change adaptation. Her work spans multiple disciplines including anthropology, environmental studies, and legal studies, with particular attention to Colombia's post-conflict context. She has been particularly active in researching innovative water management approaches such as ice stupas as responses to melting cryospheres and water scarcity.

Her scholarly contributions demonstrate a commitment to decolonial approaches and hemispheric perspectives in environmental humanities, with significant attention to bilingual and digital storytelling methods for environmental justice.

Dr. Lyons is currently leading research projects including "Just Energy Transition Debates and Practices in Colombia's Critical Mineral Belt" (2025) and "Engineering Nature-Based Buffers to Address Climate Change and Water Scarcity in the Andes" (2022).