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Columbia Climate School announces first teacher hires


Columbia Climate School announces first teacher hires

Archaeologist and anthropologist Kristina G. Douglass has been named associate professor of climate, the first faculty member at the Columbia Climate Institute. Douglass’ research focuses on investigating human-environment interactions in Madagascar, integrating archaeological, paleoecological, and biological data to understand the dynamics of communities and their environments over time.

Douglas will join faculty from Columbia University who are already part of the Climate Institute’s first national graduate program focused on training the next generation of climate change leaders. Although these faculty members are located in other centers and departments, Douglas is the first faculty member to go directly to the Climate Institute.

Archaeologist and anthropologist Christina Douglas. (Patrick Mansell/Penn State University)

“We are delighted that Kristina will be joining the Climate School team, bringing her pioneering, inclusive research approach to human-environment interaction, environmental justice and conservation,” said Founding Dean Alex Halliday. “Christina’s work is highly aligned with the Climate School’s priorities for leveraging interdisciplinary research and education.”

Before joining the Climate Institute, Douglas was the Joyce and Doug Sherwin Early Career Professor at the Institute of Rock Ethics and an assistant professor of anthropology and African studies at Penn State. For the past eleven years, she has been directing the Morumbe archaeological project in southwestern Madagascar. Working with local communities, conservationists and an interdisciplinary team of scientists, the project reconstructs the region’s historic ecology, providing long-term perspectives on climate change, human environmental dynamics, migration, settlement and animal extinction.

“I am excited to join Columbia’s Climate School and hope to provide students with an important perspective on the social, ecological and political dimensions of human interaction with the environment, while providing mentors and role models to these impressive students,” Douglas said.

Douglas earned a degree in classical archaeology from Dartmouth College and a master’s and doctorate in anthropology from Yale University. She completed a Peter Barker Postdoctoral Fellowship in Anthropology, Paleontology, and Vertebrate Zoology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, where she remains a research associate.douglas is a 2021 Andrew Carnegie Fellows. Her efforts to advance community inclusivity and co-produced science are featured as the cover story in the October 2018 issue nature and in a Articles for July 2021 On the responsibility of scientists to the stakeholder community during the COVID-19 pandemic. Douglas’ appointment at the Climate School begins July 1, 2022.




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