Associate Professor of Tropical Resources and Director of the Tropical Resources Institute, School of Forestry & Environmental Studies

Lisa is a Professor of Tropical Resources & Director of the Tropical Resources Institute at Yale University's School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. She earned a B.A. in Anthropology with honors from Harvard University, a Ph.D in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University and held a Mercer Post-doctoral Fellowship at Harvard University. She has spent over 25 years South and Southeast Asian conducting scientific research, building local capacity and outreach with policy studies. She has held a diversity of consultancy positions for several foundations, private sector, conservation and rural development organizations, as well as the US Agency for International Development, The World Bank and Asian Development Bank. Lisa served as a Visiting Research Fellow at the East-West Center's Ecosystem & Governance Program, Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, and Marie Tharp Fellow at Columbia University's Earth Institute. Currently, she is a MacArthur Fellow, Santa Fe Institute External Faculty and serves on NASA's Earth Science and SEDAC/CIESIN (Columbia University & NASA) Advisory Board, as well as the Tropical Forest Foundation, Forest Dialogue and Forest Integrity Network under Transparency International's Corruption Watch Program.

Lisa's current interdisciplinary programs in Asia and Latin America examine the effects of land use change, climate, drought and fire on carbon dynamics, biodiversity and rural livelihoods with the impacts of governmental policies and industrial practices on ecosystems. Her work investigates timber conglomerates and agribusiness' operations and aims to alter policies and practices to promote equitable land use with better conservation and management. Lisa is involved with several projects on "Pro-Poor" Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) and the impacts of climate change with indigenous communities in several tropical countries. Professor Curran is interested in the mechanisms that underlie community structure and dynamics of tropical forests and how ecological interactions are altered by human activities. Her work aims to enhance equitable and responsible management of tropical forests by integrating knowledge of ecological processes in natural systems with the socio-political and economic realities as viewed by a diversity of users. Field research primarily in Indonesia has focused on long-term studies of the reproductive ecology, demography, and harvest of mast-fruiting Dipterocarpaceae, the most economically important family of tropical timber. Current research interests include: spatio-temporal scale of natural and anthropogenic processes and disturbance; plant-animal interactions, especially seed predation, herbivory, and seed dispersal; canopy tree demography, phenology, and regeneration; ecological role of ectomycorrhizae in ecosystems; and effects of government policies and logging practices on ecosystem management and biodiversity in Asia.

Further Information:
School Forestry & Environmental Studies
Environmental Governance