Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere

About Phaedra C. PezzulloRobert Cox

Phaedra C. Pezzullo is Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and a dual citizen with the US and Italia. Her interdisciplinary background informs her research on environmental justice climate justice just transition public advocacy and tourist studies. Her book Toxic Tourism (University of Alabama Press 2007) won four awards including the Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Book Award and the National Communication Associations Environmental Communication Division Book Award. Among other publications she coedited Green Communication and China (Michigan State University Press 2020) and Environmental Justice and Environmentalism (MIT Press 2007). She was a founding editor of the journal Environmental Communication and serves on its editorial board. She has volunteered on the Sierra Clubs national Environmental Justice Committee and Affinity Group Working Group consulted with cities and counties on a just transition and was a delegate at COP21 in Paris. Pezzullo is a founding co-director of the Center for Creative Climate Communication and Behavior Change (C3BC) on her campus. She also enjoys outdoor recreation and cooking a plant-based diet. Robert Cox is Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His principal research areas are environmental and climate change communication and strategic studies of social movements. A internationally-recognized leading scholar who helped found the field of environmental communication Cox is coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication (2015; second edition forthcoming) editor of the four-volume reference series Environmental Communication (Sage 2016) and the author of numerous studies of environmental and climate change campaigns. He has served three times (1994-1996; 2000-2001; 2007-2008) as president of the Sierra Club the largest grassroots U.S. environmental organization and was also on the board of directors for Earth Echo International whose mission is to empower youth to take action that restores and protects our water planet. Cox also continues to advise environmental groups on their communication programs. He regularly participates in environmental and climate change initiatives and has campaigned with former vice president Al Gore singer Melissa Etheridge and other public figures. He also enjoys hiking and trekking in the Himalayas Europe and the southern Appalachian Mountains in the United States.