Karen Holmberg, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of environmental science at Gallatin. She is a volcanologist and archaeologist interested in the creative conveyance of environmental knowledge and narratives of deep time, prehistory, and modern science. She is the Principal Investigator of a transdisciplinary project in Patagonia, working with massive coastline transformations due to glacial retreat, sea-level rise, and volcanic eruptions. She is on the Board of Directors for The Chaiten Site Museum in Chile, which features art-science residencies and displays the long-term human experience of the coastal landscape. Her fieldwork near Naples, Italy, is on physics-based prediction of volcanic unrest and the use of the arts to convey scientific conception of risk. She is co-director of the New York Virtual Volcano Observatory on Governors Island. A strong advocate for the public understanding of science, Holmberg recently contributed to Critical Zones, a book (MIT Press) and exhibition (ZKM) on observing the Earth System and collective strategies for thriving across human-imposed borders. She grew up on a back-to-the-land farm on the Chesapeake Bay with 40-acres of oyster grounds in a rural, water-based community.
