Robin Wall Kimmerer PhD

Dr. Kimmerer is a mother, plant ecologist, writer and SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. She serves as the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment whose mission is to create programs which draw on the wisdom of both indigenous and scientific knowledge for our shared goals of sustainability.

Her research interests include the role of traditional ecological knowledge in ecological restoration and the ecology of mosses. She is active in efforts to broaden access to environmental science education for Native students and to create new models for integration of indigenous philosophy and scientific tools on behalf of land and culture. She is engaged in programs which introduce the benefits of traditional ecological knowledge to the scientific community, in a way that respects and protects indigenous knowledge.

She holds a BS in Botany from SUNY ESF, an MS, and Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, traditional knowledge, and restoration ecology. As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only the restoration of ecological communities but the restoration of our relationships to land. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild.