Karl Zimmerer

Karl Zimmerer is professor of Environment and Society Geography and directs the GeoSyntheSES Lab at Pennsylvania State University. He co-chairs the Peru GEN network and the International Agrobiodiversity Workshop. Karl is involved in ongoing research and teaching activities in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. His sabbatical activities in 2015-2016 included bases at Harvard and Humboldt Universities, in Peru, and with the Culture Landscapes project in Europe and Japan. Karl focuses on approaches to the transformative resilience of land use and food systems using agrobiodiversity models, spatial landscape designs, and cultural, socioeconomic, and historical analysis. Karl is currently researching territorial initiatives for sustainability; citizen science seed networks; links of agrobiodiversity to multi-scale global changes; and the emergence of periurban and new rural social ecologies. His recent articles appear in ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America, Regional Environmental Change, LAND, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Landscape and Urban Planning, Ecology and Society, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Publications of the Modern Language Association. Karl's books include Changing Fortunes: Biodiversity and Peasant Livelihoods in the Peruvian Andes, Globalization and New Geographies of Conservation, and Political Ecology. He is the recipient of grants and fellowships from NSF, Fulbright, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and is an elected AAAS fellow.