About

Lisa H. Sideris is a Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also serves as Department Vice Chair. Her academic background includes a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Indiana University, with a focus on Critical and Ethical Studies, as well as a Master's degree in Religious Studies and a Bachelor's degree in Bioanthropology/History & Philosophy of Science from Indiana University. Prior to her current position, she taught in the Religious Studies Department at Indiana University, the Faculty of Religious Studies and School of the Environment at McGill University in Montreal, and the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Pace University in New York City. Her teaching encompasses environmental ethics, science and religion, nature spirituality, and emerging ethical issues of the Anthropocene. She is the author of several works, including 'Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection' and 'Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World,' as well as a co-editor of a collection on Rachel Carson titled 'Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge.' Her research broadly focuses on the ethical significance of natural processes and how environmental values are shaped or obscured by narratives from religion and science. Recently, her work examines the role of wonder in scientific discourse and its influence on human perceptions of nature. She is particularly interested in the mythic, religious, and ethical dimensions of the Anthropocene and related technologies such as geoengineering and de-extinction. Dr. Sideris actively participates in international research initiatives within the environmental humanities and serves as President-Elect of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Philosophy
• Environmental ethics
• Psychology
• History
• Law
• Art history
• Social psychology
• Literature
• Psychoanalysis
• Epistemology
• Aesthetics
• Art
• Psychotherapist
• Archaeology

Selected publications

• Title Pending

  Zygon® · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Religions in Extractive Zones: Methods, Imaginaries, Solidarities

  Religions · 2025-06-23

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This essay serves as an expansive, conceptual anchor and scholarly argument that demonstrates the modality of “reflexive extractivist” religious studies and also orients the Special Issue on Religion in Extractive Zones. We demonstrate that critical religious and theological scholarship have existing tools and methods for deepening the study of extraction in the environmental humanities and related discourses. We make two interconnected arguments: that religion has been and continues to be produced out of extractive zones in the conflicts, negotiations, and strategic alliances of contact zones and that the complex production of sacred and secular in these zones can be fruitfully analyzed as imaginaries and counter-imaginaries of extraction. We present these arguments through a dialogical and critically integrative methodology, in which arguments from theorists across several disciplines are put into conversation and from which our insights emerge. This methodology leads to a final section of the essay that sets a framework for, and invites further dialogical and integrative scholarship on, the practical ethics of non- or counter-extractive academic research, scholarship, and publishing. Offering theoretical, methodological, and practical suggestions, we call for a turn toward reflexive extractivist religious studies, articulate the specific conceptual and methodological approaches linking religion and extraction, and thus set the framework and tone for the Special Issue.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Introduction to the Special Issue: Religion in Extractive Zones

  Religions · 2025-06-25

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Religion and extractivism—like other aspects of a petroculture (Petrocultures Research Group 2016; Wilson et al [...]

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Wonder in an Uncertain World: A Necessary Habit for Building Care for Nature

  Veritas · 2024-08-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This article explores analytically different senses and usages of the concept of wonder, in order to analyze which of them are more fruitful for fostering care for nature, especially when it tends to avoid scientific reductionism or fundamentalist understandings of religions.Wonder that is understood as openess to mystery and uncertainty is particularly positive precisely beacause it moves us away from the aforementioned dangers.In this sense, wonder as awe seems to be the most positive sense of wonder.Inasmuch wonder questions our way of doing things and/or our preconceptions it may be a useful resource to embrace for environmentally friendly habits.The article compares this sense of wonder that Rachel Carson developed in order to question our dominion of nature and tendency to control it, with Pope Francis' claim that paying attention to reality rather than to our deformed visions of nature is necessary to foster care for the environment rather than destroying it.In conclusion the article argues that wonder is a powerful resource, for believers and non-believers alike, to build a better relationship with the environment in order to preserve it.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The pope’s new letter isn’t just an ‘exhortation’ on the environment – for Francis, everything is connected, which is a source of wonder

  2023-10-06

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Living Well Together in a Climate-Changed Future: Religious Imaginaries on the Cutting Edge of Genetic Technology

  Religions · 2023-11-15 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This essay focuses on the emotional and relational investments of scientists and others engaged in and supportive of genetic technologies used in conservation efforts, with particular attention to the different moral and religious imaginaries that fuel endeavors to save species threatened by climate change and extinction. I argue that two distinct visions and competing religious repertoires can be discerned in the secular landscape of genetic technologies deployed in coral restoration and de-extinction. Each endeavor brings forth its own forms of magic, myth- and meaning-making. At the heart of coral protection is the symbol of the holobiont, suggestive of cooperative endeavors, collective labor, networking, and distributed and embodied knowledge. Central to de-extinction imaginaries are motifs of individual competition, machine metaphors, “selfish” genetic components, and a spirit of entrepreneurial excitement and profiteering. The essay contrasts these two visions as competing accounts of relationality—or the lack thereof—and asks which religious and moral imaginaries we should embrace as we move into an era marked by intensified technological intervention and high-risk efforts to address the effects of climate change. I suggest that the values that drive de-extinction technologies are largely at odds with environmental and social goals of living well together, as humans and more-than-humans, in a present and future world transformed by climate change and species death.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Religion

  2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Anthropocene Narratives and New Cosmologies

  Ecology and ethics · 2023-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Radical Strategies

  Journal for the Study of Radicalism · 2023-07-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Environmentalists have long worried about humanity's estrangement from nature, and the emotional, psychological, and ethical consequences. In a world dominated by virtual and human-built environments and insulated from the rhythms of nature, concerns about our alienation from nature have intensified. To the extent that they occur at all, direct encounters with nature increasingly take a negative form, as seen in ever more destructive and erratic storms, fires, and floods driven by climate change. Entire bodies of literature have sprung up to address the psychological toll of cascading losses entailed in habitat destruction, species extinction, and climate chaos.1 Though not an official mental health diagnosis, “ecoanxiety” is defined by the American Psychological Association (APA) as “chronic fear of environmental doom.” An APA survey in 2020 found that more than two-thirds of Americans are “somewhat or extremely anxious” about climate change and its impacts.2 Grief and anxiety emerge as responses to losses that have already occurred or are in the process of occurring, and they can also present as anticipatory responses to environmental losses expected in the future. Negative emotions that suffuse our experiences of the natural world can lead to disaster fatigue, paralysis, and even nature avoidance, all of which may hamper motivation to engage in environmental action and nature protection at a time when urgent response is critical. “Everyday alienation from nature is establishing itself as the norm, and we are confronting loss on a scale we find difficult to acknowledge and process.”3Feelings of disconnection from the natural world may be compounded by the sheer abstractness of many global environmental issues. Extinction and climate change are two of the most pronounced indicators of the environmental crisis, but they are not always easy to perceive. For all the traumatic immediacy of climate events like floods, fires, droughts, and violent storms, there remains something incomprehensible about the scale of environmental change, a quality that eludes our everyday grasp. The sheer enormity of the current environmental crisis and its significance on a geological time scale can make it difficult to process at a phenomenological level. As Glenn Albrecht, a leading theorist of environmental mourning, observes, “There is now a mismatch between our lived experience of the world, and our ability to conceptualize and comprehend it.”4 The very idea that human activity could alter or disrupt a planet's entire climate system seems unthinkable, even blasphemous, to some.Well-meaning climate scientists have attempted for years to educate the public on the difference between weather and climate, reinforcing the idea that particular extreme weather events, in themselves, are not directly traceable to climate change, even while a changing climate may make extreme weather more likely.5 Thus, even when climate change appears to us in tangible form, expert opinion advises against extrapolating from discrete events to a broader global phenomenon. Of course, there are good reasons for distinguishing weather and climate change (there is the danger of interpreting a cold winter as counterevidence to rising global temperatures, for example), but excluding climate change from the realm of everyday experience entails risks as well. We may be inclined to doubt our ability to sense these changes, and in failing to sense them, we are less likely to confront them.Extinction, for a variety of reasons, is also a difficult concept to pin down. A common account of extinction defines it as the death of a species, a phenomenon that no one experiences directly (even in cases where researchers document firsthand the death of a species’ last remaining members). Scientists often employ more specific definitions than those familiar to the broader public. Species can be extinct locally (extirpation) without being globally extinct, and a species may be considered “functionally” extinct when it is no longer considered viable or its population declines to the point that its role in an ecosystem in greatly diminished. However extinction is defined, it is difficult to perceive and process an absence, particularly one that is occurring largely out of sight. Indeed, the very concept of a species, whether defined by behavioral, morphological, or genetic criteria, remains an abstraction of sorts. Species are entities existing across space and time. No one ever sees an entire species. This is not to deny that extinction is real or to suggest that species have dubious ethical significance. But there is a disconnect between our knowledge of these entities and categories, and our ability to access them directly. In short, the seemingly intangible nature of climate change, extinction, and even concepts like species may further erode our ability and motivation to respond to current global crises.Adding to these obstacles to perceiving nature's decline, scholars have also identified a generational phenomenon sometimes called environmental amnesia, seen in the shifting baseline of what is considered normal to each successive generation. In decades past, for example, insects were so abundant that a car windshield would often be splattered with their remains after a road trip. Older generations recall this experience vividly, but younger people today have little or no awareness that insect life was once so plentiful, with insect populations in decline in so many parts of the world.6 Environmental amnesia names this disturbing generation gap in terms of what is considered normal or commonplace. “All of us construct a conception of what is environmentally normal based on the natural world we encounter in our childhood,” Peter Kahn and Thea Weiss argue. “The crux is that with each ensuing generation, the amount of environmental degradation increases, but each generation tends to perceive that degraded condition as the non-degraded condition, as the normal experience.”7 Adjustments to the new normal, even when they occur unconsciously, involve physical, spiritual, and psychological losses. Young people today, for example, may experience heightened stress owing to a dearth of natural sounds and spaces, even if they are not aware of the sources of stress. It is worth keeping in mind that human evolution occurred in an intimate, if not always benign, partnership with nature. Even in our highly artificialized world, we continue to display a deep-seated propensity to engage with nature and nonhuman life, an innate affinity often referred to as biophilia.8 But as fewer people spend time outdoors, and as ecosystems degrade and species disappear, these trends also impede our “ability to preserve what remains—because we no longer understand what we're losing.”9 Biophilic tendencies may give way to biophobia, an aversive response to nature that perpetuates disconnection, and vice versa, in an iterative fashion.Confronting the global environmental crisis is surprisingly complicated. It seems possible that perceiving loss and change vividly, and not perceiving them can with responses and motivation to awareness can be while little environmental or the climate is like climate change be at the of public without and the that to our from nature is an in and alienation from nature. disconnection from the natural world for the in a in its of in the of our present of the and in the sense of for or change, as with also the of in the or a change that from the are of change from the as with of response and action with the to the observes, the of and of and But a ethical and to these may be by an on and public of As of their of these that and with nature is is often in terms as or nature, a of that erode the everyday sense of and in of of to the or even of of nature with of the where the is in and sometimes is at in by of and with the natural propensity for with life a in and with this a of the population than by a on in or direct of these of a of that of the human a of the environmental crisis is an sense of human and a of nature a sense of human on the and the is as as for to the of experience for in to for of these are the between and of and on the one and and of on the As the of at in a it is worth the on of for the they can on the nature of environmental and people to be in environmental concerns and by this of in the and ethical of of these as to a of with nature and their and psychological A of is that it a experience and with in a and to to the to something or than many of have largely on the experiences and ethical of there is a way in which is itself a and even the sense of being of something than is in the of This is the even when are not directly as we it is not to find that environmental and seems to be occurring, a of the risks and of at a time when of and have also across and in the and As with the current there a of in the of that to these and their and ethical in mind the to a disconnect between and nature, and the they present to environmental we now to the significance of as a of environmental and nature the of and it is to at the that many researchers the is to as the which and even at one extreme and as and at the are between definitions of and of of with or the to them as the of from and to and that many people in encounters with nature and with the environmental in was a of as a of and and for the natural with its of the of may be in environmental was to the and the and the and of and An to in the and if from the of its an with if by The of and is one would in most in a after The of as an in a The of that to the natural world by a sense of and a with about and in of the and to nature. In this to is not to experience nature's could a at with a or the everyday of a a an up of in of the sounds of can a of emotions and sense of as awareness of and by or a at the for and that so human to The idea is that by to nature the and not of one is with an sense of nature's and an in to it in and A sense of is It is not the of and is it the of highly “The of with the natural world are not for in the of The of are to the of and and their while of often from experience and everyday at something more of of between nature experiences and of nature's new they were always at the of our can a in a of a world we we already even a to the for what is and an to or on the to a sense of is a of what the can of and of with the that the of the of in less and more and to even after the have The of and to recall or and in but often by the of experiences and an with of as as we have the ethical of its to of and to that which is or In its to and and can of or even a sense of or of the in the of something and can our to the and the and the may in the of the of as as to and and and the of to have a now in of and to of with and a sense of being present with something than and not an but of is to that be by or the it may also in the of and knowledge that which itself to us as a is not or can us to in encounters with what we we already at the sheer of a of life and the world, a quality or by between and a sense of in be not as of and but as a of to the experiences that a For experience on a of life are with than fear or that is worth is more than a of or it may The significance of in a process that researchers an to something not our of and that being in the of something with of and argue. also a in with of and The difficult process of of to can us and in its In this encounters of may of we from of and as one theorist a not to of researchers in the account of by or at a of that it would last In that not in a to to and the being may the of an sense of For and have often worried about the of to a or a to the or of that with the the of can or negative on a to experiences of and loss of or to in an experience of can negative to from of and and a to the sense of and with of can be difficult or the between and a sense of but also one of and The can be for and of and in or to the of or a sense of and that the experience of experience and on a of for and as as in and The to in and the of to with and to the this them, not for nature and its sometimes and they also be to with the of an environmental future. we encounter an of of a sense of even in with tendencies to and may be a it may take years to In world the process of owing to the of climate action and the disconnection between and reasons that be may experiences and of and that of and but without of the specific and In the of to or of and and to so and with out for of in the or those not inclined and that environmental of the were by environmental like For the most not between and for nature in the of direct action and scholars have the between particularly in and heightened of environmental experiences of in as the loss of natural environmental in of where in way while to environmental like to or that take in natural experiences of with an natural a particular sense of the more the loss of to nature and nonhuman as with experiences of and the between and to with bodies or of The of an of being with nonhuman and natural and experiences of life, where the so with that of as a discrete is The world remains and for like those by have of with nature definitions in their the entails an of by of and as a of a to a when a not to the from people and the it an world from The concept was to in a from in in from experience by for this as a and than and This account by account of as in a in the to its the the to be with an but of and a of an of The tends a of the as from the while by the and of these It seems that of these could be to of nature as a or of and to that the could itself as of a of and but a and condition by of with something and The experience could a to and as a be as a than a or concerns that and to about for or also recall of as two an a on the about the of and to change, not a in of or a of have as for the that experiences can longer to nature and environmental the in us for a to of of to their of being with a that and their even of or for nature and its to of that or identified as sources of environmental as or is their with nature that experience the of as an of their bodies or those of time a those one it as well. It was like being that of the already sense of of of and for the nonhuman of and as and a of of and can have as may continue on a more the for a new an sense of and of that an way of the is not always a but more of an the world, a way of perceiving and being to the of in this a sense of to out and of and environmental loss and of are not or but time that the natural that In of to out of by and can and one in in environmental issues. The of that to and make of negative emotions of and and present environmental to be at in as these with the specific of anxiety and while the of and nature that make their The reinforcing of and the ability of one to the have to with a common quality in like can be often a of or at a of the for it the familiar world, us the We are with the that the world is not what we the these experiences extent to which we are of our with as The and by environmental be and even when than for the as a the of the and As with experiences of can be a an to change in response to a change, often and in a world we for involve our to the as of an that on the of which are In of or or the to in what terms the of the and we to and to address environmental of for nature and environmental have long in the to people and but nature to be and of sometimes of protection and are a common of what of or where there is a pronounced sense of with a as the or also that there is something about the and of environmental and the of between and nature, or between and nonhuman to understand in the natural world, that against the In this of and with nature and many of were in with with at in this and with the for and and is between the of and to nature in like that at the of the in and and the This is not observes, and are to of experiences in nature, often by the for the of the and like the which the and of and an environmental In the a the Environmental from the an and of nature and of the of with the of the environmental to that may have to the of experiences and of one as these in of and heightened and with nature experiences and encounters with nature, often leading to in environmental protection and the in the after an experience with and the of as a experience and a of or with the of nature. so about was a for highly of humanity's which and space more than of with and in nature to to this environmental that one to the world as one quality of this it one in direct with of the and one that the entire is the in which we are to be by encounters of in nature and experiences have a of in bodies of on nature experiences and of that in nature can have and for a as for to the natural world, in in nature As as this the as already that many people today increasingly have little or no access to the natural of access is not a of from nature, or the of and virtual on the of people is also a of or it is an in of environmental Even for those to to nature at a the of can be a and the for to our present environmental is short, with scientists that we have a or less to take and action to the of climate a propensity to can take time to and particular not to all, can this be in a more and direct To it is there a to the of an sense of and The for its of and Indeed, many of a and the that to like health and or and The of is less would when the which it the natural Even of like of nature's its to to and to like as we can something like a is in itself but also for the good it can to the and to the world at which of its ability to of and the of for the natural world and that may one to nature for its as something that us with its and not for its Indeed, as of have a of is its to at tendencies to as to or to and in of an of that which is of this is to that even if is with particular in the and that can against of nature and to whether of can be or can be found in on what a what the and we them are found in nature while are in a A of a referred to as and to on the by to particular A from the of of by and more common of and of and of with something the are often by or or that sometimes experiences of direct with nonhuman or to of with nature. that have a they disrupt existing of and to new and As are less likely to nature after a there is that the of in its more and The or its ability to by the of This may these have found to anxiety and as as or than and without many of the In a to a also as of in the to the with of those in the The difference in was also the in the was and it was in the to can be and researchers that or of the and of with nature and can of that often as we can and that time as of is to that even experiences with these at found that a experience with for what researchers nature or the extent to which one a of The of to anxiety and also them a for from or anticipatory mourning, them to and continue to this difficult and tendencies are at the of the crisis, the of an be found in In to and are seen to of and and to the natural As we have at nature and the experience a in which and of are But not experiences and of mind experiences of in nature. that these and to the natural world, long after the experience and even in where the experience not take in a natural In one all of the that their of with nature after of and that for the natural world experiences by have to lead to their and in many cases change the and of their the that in to nature are not researchers significance in the human in with the and a from the of that to as alter the process in It is to that the of these for may the very of and that have long and and to the role of in environmental and at the and by of spiritual, and the of these a in and the environmental Extinction is a in A and for many and in of In to a in where a of that have in for a that from a and the experience as to life in and to in the of that to Extinction In Extinction or as it is its and the in to a climate to change with and that as a have and to at the of and their have and of The and of is the the of with environmental and that can by As with experiences of and where activity in the of the is when have a all their a from the on the as and of and sense of the of in like and but not by of the of and that and experiences of are of their most and and sometimes highly public for extinct species the sense of and with all life that are to and In a of environmental in the that is not a but the very of of seen in the of and and the experience suggest that these may be most and when in of of the of to a of in the on in years the for awareness of the of that most Americans are of a that seems to no and may deny people while also many to and have many to and the that these and and something like of all with specific and in that be on the that have of these In these is for many reasons, their and for the of a time when more and more people from nature or of environmental or nature avoidance, to of that in of and and and To be these are not without but with in they not to risks than many or as of For for are not inclined and or from nature, or from their of and anxiety about environmental and global may to a of common seen in of and and in the of by of to than the dearth of natural experiences in many today, and aversive responses that sometimes experiences of be and and of the in people to confront it even in cases of may not with of and and heightened of can the of our global The and the a climate change for about the of for confronting that climate is from diagnosis, for the environmental crisis us not with death but death of the world of that the between death and climate death and extinction to all, in to that of is the last in a climate of whether of human or the and death of entire species, is the last we or But there is a that and with nature more of us to or but to sense and to to and of in our and the already to generations of to be of and or of all can to the gap between our and the in the world the time to these is

  PublisherDOI

• A Rupture in the Earth

  2022-01-01 · 3 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding
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Frequent coauthors

• Joseph D. Witt

  University of Tennessee at Knoxville

  2 shared

• Lucas F. Johnston

  2 shared

• John Whalen‐Bridge

  1 shared

• Jennifer E. Stellar

  University of Toronto

  1 shared

• Kathleen Dean Moore

  1 shared

• Piercarlo Valdesolo

  Claremont McKenna College

  1 shared

• Steve Paulson

  Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

  1 shared

• Callaghan McCarthy

  1 shared