How do I pronounce “Phaedra Pezzullo?” Fay-dra Pet-zull-o. Listen at this link.
Preferred pronouns: she/her/hers

Phaedra C. Pezzullo (BS, BA, MA, PhD) is a professor and Kleiman Faculty Scholar in the Department of Communication in the College of Communication, Media, Design, & Information at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA, as well as a Faculty Associate of Environmental Studies and a Faculty Affiliate of Ethnic Studies and Media Studies. She is an internationally known scholar with interdisciplinary expertise in the humanities and sciences, focusing primarily on environmental and climate justice studies and environmental communication in public spheres.

Pezzullo’s latest monograph is: Beyond Straw Men: Plastic Pollution and Networked Cultures of Care (University of California Press, 2023), which is based, in part, on her podcast, Communicating Care. Beyond Straw Men has been recognized with three national awards: the Tarla Rai Peterson top Book Award in Environmental Communication; the James A. Winans-Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric/Public Address; and the Diamond Anniversary Book Award.

Pezzullo is the Director of the Sustainability and Storytelling Lab. She also is founding Co-Director of C3BC (the Center for Creative Climate Communication and Behavior Change), which confronts the climate crisis through creative inspiration and social change, and the Just Transition Collaborative, which engages in pedagogy and public engagement about the necessary global transformation from a carbon-based extractive economy to sustainable, life-affirming cultures. Relatedly, Pezzullo is co-director of Inside the Greenhouse, which fosters creative climate communication for decision-makers, youth, & fenceline communities. She serves as the Director of the CU Boulder Graduate Certificate in Environmental Justice. 

Committed to public service, Pezzullo has consulted, trained, and worked with many organizations and partners, including the American Bar Association, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, University Cooperation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), The Pulitzer Center, the Sierra Club, and local government planning departments. She has been quoted in The Guardian, TIME, the Los Angeles Times, Open Canada, and CNN Travel.

Pezzullo co-edits a University of California a book series, Environmental Communication, Power, and Culture, with Prof. LeiLani Nishime. Pezzullo also serves as Editor of the international and interdisciplinary journal Environmental Communication (2023-2026). She has given talks throughout the US and internationally, including at the Communication University of China (Beijing), Fudan University (Shanghai), and the Grand amphithéâtre de la Sorbonne, Université de Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, France. Since Spring 2023, she has given talks at DePaul University and Northwestern University in Chicago, USA, as well as guest taught classes that are reading her latest book at Yale-NUS (National University of Singapore) College, Vanderbilt University, UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Arkansas, and University of North Texas. In 2024, Pezzullo gave a keynote at the University of Aalborg, Denmark, on Care Work in a Green Transition and in 2025, she participated in COCE in Tasmania, Australia and in a conference on The Dialectics of Care at the The Education University of Hong Kong.

Pezzullo has coauthored and/or (co)edited over a half dozen additional books, including four editions of Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere (Sage,  2016, 2018, 2021, 2025, coauthored with Robert Cox), and Green Communication and China (MSU Press, 2020, co-edited with Jingfang Liu). She has published in and currently serves on the editorial boards of over a half dozen journals and has published widely (see Vita). Pezzullo also authored the highly-regarded Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Travel, Pollution, and Environmental Justice (University of Alabama Press, 2007), which examines how communities use noncommercial tours to map counter-geographies and to raise awareness about the impacts of toxic pollution and environmental injustices more broadly. Her innovative argument and fieldwork was recognized with four national awards: Book of the Year Award in Critical and Cultural Studies; the Christine L. Oravec Research Award in Environmental Communication; the James A. Winans-Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric/Public Address; and the Jane Jacobs Book Award from the Urban Communication Foundation. Perhaps most unexpectedly, an indie-rock song, Toxic Tour, was inspired by drawing lyrics from her book (The Holland Dutch, 2008).

Pezzullo’s current research projects are focused on: care in a just transition, the cultural politics of plastics, desire-centered storytelling, climate justice in Colorado, climate risks for people inside incarceration infrastructure, and environmental communication.

(Banner image credit: Gloria Bridges, 2017)