Our Editors

Editors in Chief

Patricia (Patty) Balvanera is a professor at the Institute for Ecosystems and Sustainability Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She was trained in biology, ethnobotany and ecology. Within large inter- and trans-disciplinary teams and research networks, she explores the role of biodiversity in contributing to human well-being and analyzes the dynamics of social ecological systems, with emphasis on the values that underpin the drivers of such dynamics. At the local scale, she monitors the dynamics of managed diverse tropical systems, and co-develops more sustainable food systems through transdisciplinary processes designed by creatives around the kitchen. At the global scale, she develops conceptual frameworks and monitoring strategies, performs cross-site syntheses, and delivers assessments at the science-policy interface. She has co-led several inter- and trans-disciplinary initiatives such as the Scientific Committee of the Programme for Ecosystem Change and Society (one of the core Projects of Future Earth), the Ecosystem Services group of the Global Earth Observation Biodiversity Observation Network (GEOBON), the Mexican Network on Social Ecological Systems and Sustainability, and the Values Assessment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Katrina (Kate) Brown is Professor Emerita of Social Sciences at the University of Exeter in UK. Her pioneering interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work focuses on individual and society capacities for adaptation and transformation, emphasising resilience as co-produced and co-constructed though social relations. Her PhD examined women’s collective action in drought-prone Kenya, and she has worked with communities and collaborators around the world on environmental change and social justice. She was granted an inaugural ‘Axa Outlook’ award for her project ‘You, Me and Our Resilience’ to work with creative practitioners and communities to develop actions to build resilience to climate change. Her book, Resilience, Development and Global Change presents a re-visioning of resilience for development. She holds an honorary doctorate from Wageningen University, Netherlands, for ‘outstanding contributions to environmental social science, in the fields of political ecology, conservation and resilience’. She is Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences and was identified as one of the most influential cross-disciplinary and social scientists in the 2020 and 2021 Highly Cited Researchers lists. As Professor Emerita, she describes herself as a ‘feral social scientist’ and currently works on environmental change, inequality and resilience, and as an advisor to international scientific organisations and programs.

Craig R. Allen is the Director of the Center for Resilience in Agricultural Working Landscapes and Professor in the School of Natural Resources, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He retired as Leader of the USGS Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in 2018. He is a member of the Board of the Resilience Alliance, and is an elected lifetime Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), for contributions to resilience theory and practice. His work focuses on the development of both theory and practice, and has focused on quantifying resilience, developing resilience based concepts such as panarchy, discontinuities, spatial regimes, and more. His work often addresses the role of invasions, extinctions and landscape change on social-ecological resilience. More recently, Dr. Allen has begun to address questions of resilience in working landscapes. He has published >250 articles and 5 books, with Applied Panarchy (with L. Gunderson and A. Garmestani) published in 2022. He has served as a science advisor for the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the USGS Powell Center and NSF Science and Technology centers. His interest in resilience began during his Ph.D. work at the University of Florida, under the guidance of CS Holling. Dr. Allen also completed a post-doc with Holling in Zoology at the University of Florida.

Former Editors in Chief

Lance Gunderson
Emory University, USA

Marco Janssen
Arizona State University, USA

Carl Folke
Stockholm University, Sweden

C.S. ‘Buzz’ Holling
University of Florida, USA

C.S. ‘Buzz’ Holling

Founding Editor-in-Chief

Ecology and Society would not exist if it were not for C.S. ‘Buzz’ Holling, the founding Editor-in-Chief who guided the journal from its inaugural issue in 1997 through the first 6 years of publication. Buzz saw the potential of open-access, online publishing as an opportunity to transform not only how research was reviewed and distributed but also as a way of disrupting some of the rigidities associated with traditional research publishing that he perceived as limiting the development of conservation science and the field of ecology itself. He embraced the twin goals of novelty and experimentation as the guiding principles for a new journal that sought to go beyond traditional research by publishing interdisciplinary papers that combined theory and practice, using a new medium – the internet, at a time when most academics were just opening their first email accounts. Now more than 25 years on, Ecology and Society has continued to flourish under his successors and Buzz remains an inspiration. His passion for rigorous scholarship, innovation and embracing change, is reflected in every issue and special feature and continues to boldly guide the journal’s development. Buzz Holling passed away on August 16 2019. The editorial “Remembering Buzz Holling” (https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol24/iss4/art39/) reminds us, he lived a remarkable life of creativity, discovery, scholarship and service to humanity. 

Editor block – please see right sidebar for options.

Editorial Board

91 members
  • Marco A Janssen

    School of Sustainability, Arizona State University
  • Samantha S Stone-Jovicich

    Land and Water, CSIRO, Australia
  • Maria Tengo

    Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University
  • Ronald L Trosper

    University of Arizona
  • Ingrid E van Putten

    CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Castray Esplanade, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia; Centre for Marine Socioecology, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS 7001, Australia
  • Brian Walker

    Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, AustraliaCSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Australia
  • Frances R Westley

    Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resiliencen and School for Environment, Enterprise and Development, University of Waterloo, Kitchener, ON, Canada
  • Tracy Yandle

    New Zealand Ministry of Transport
  • Lance Gunderson

    Department of Environmental Sciences, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
  • Jon Norberg

    Stockholm University, Sweden
  • Kasper Kok

    Environmental Systems Analysis Group, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands
  • Hien T Ngo

    FAO
  • Donald Nelson

    University of Georgia, USA
  • Michele-Lee Moore

    Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden; Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria, Canada
  • Manjana Milkoreit

    University of Oslo
  • Patrick Meyfroidt

    Earth and Life Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; F.R.S.-FNRS, Brussels, Belgium
  • P. Timon McPhearson

    Urban Systems Lab, The New School, New York, NY, USA; Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook, USA; Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
  • Bonnie McCay

    Rutgers University. New Brunwick, NJ 08901, USA
  • Berta Martín-López

    Institute of Ethics and Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research, Faculty of Sustainability, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany
  • David Manuel-Navarrete

    School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
  • Jianguo Liu

    Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48823, USA
  • Louis Lebel

    Chiang Mai University, Thailand
  • Steve Lansing

    Complexity Institute, Nanyang Technological University
  • Steven Lade

    Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden; Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
  • Marianne E Krasny

    Cornell University
  • Gary P Kofinas

    Resilience and Adaptation Program, University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK, USA;Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA
  • Per Olsson

    Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden
  • Lennart Olsson

    Lund University Center for Sustainability Studies, LUCSUS
  • Claudia Pahl-Wostl

    Institute of Geography, Research Centre Institute of Environmental Systems Research, Osnabrück University, Germany
  • Irene Perez-Ibarra

    University Zaragosa
  • Garry D Peterson

    Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden
  • Tobias Plieninger

    University of Göttingen, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Göttingen, Germany; University of Kassel, Faculty of Organic Agricultural Sciences, Witzenhausen, Germany
  • Ryan Plummer

    Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, Brock University, Canada
  • Christopher M Raymond

    Ecosystems and Environment Research Program, Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 65 00014 Helsinki, Finland;Department of Economics and Management, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences University
  • Victoria Reyes-García

    Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA);Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA) – Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
  • John Robinson

    University of Toronto, Canada
  • Maja Schlüter

    Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden
  • Michael Schoon

    School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, United States of America.
  • Ian Scoones

    University of Sussex, UK
  • Murray Scown

    Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University
  • Marja Spierenburg

    Leiden University, Stellenbosch University (South Africa)
  • Will Steffen

    Australian National University, Australia
  • Dave Huitema

    VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Open University of the Netherlands
  • Matias E Mastrangelo

    CONICET Argentina
  • Maria Jose Martinez Harms

  • Chinwe Ifejika Speranza

    Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Switzerland.
  • Abigail Bennett

    Michigan State University
  • Brian C Chaffin

    W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana
  • Juan Camilo Cardenas

    Universidad de Los Andes, Facultad de Economia, Calle 19A No. 1-37 Este, Bogota, Colombia, 111711
  • Francois Bousquet

    CIRAD, UMR SENS, F-34398 Montpellier, France. SENS, CIRAD, IRD, Université de Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, Montpellier, France.
  • Deborah Bossio

    The Nature Conservancy
  • Erin L Bohensky

    CSIRO Land and Water
  • Örjan Bodin

    Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
  • Reinette Biggs

    Centre for Sustainability Transitions, Stellenbosch University, South Africa; Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden
  • Marta Berbes-Blazquez

    University of Waterloo, School of Planning; Arizona State University, School for the Future of Innovation in Society
  • Stefan Gelcich

    Departamento de Ecología, Center of Applied Ecology and Sustainability (CAPES), Center for the Study of Multiple-Drivers on Marine Socio-Ecological Systems, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
  • Andrew Reid Bell

    Department of Earth & Environment, Boston University
  • Kamaljit Bawa

    University of Massachusetts, USA
  • Xavier Basurto

    Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University Marine Lab, Beaufort, North Carolina, USA
  • Stephan Barthel

    Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden; Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, University of Gävle, Kungsbäcksgatan 47, 802 67 Gävle, Sweden.
  • Rafael Calderon-Contreras

    Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana. Unidad Cuajimalpa
  • Antonio J Castro

    Andalusian Center for the Assessment and Monitoring of Global Change (CAESCG), Department of Biology and Geology, Universidad de Almería, 04120 Almería, Spain;Department of Biological Sciences, Idaho State University, 921 South 8th Avenue, Pocatello, ID,
  • Dagmar Haase

    Department of Geography, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin,, Germany; Department of Computational Landscape Ecology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Leipzig, Germany
  • Jennifer Hodbod

    Department of Community Sustainability, Michigan State University
  • Esteve Corbera

    Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, c/ de les Columnes s/n, UAB campus, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain.
  • Anne D Guerry

    Natural Capital Project, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA; School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
  • Ahjond Garmestani

    U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development; Utrecht Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law, Utrecht University
  • Marina Garcia Llorente

    Social-Ecological Systems Lab. Ecology Department, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain.
  • Jorge H. Garcia

    School of Management, Universidad de Los Andes (UASM)
  • Beth Fulton

    CSIRO
  • Ken Frank

    Michigan State University
  • Bruce C. Forbes

    Arctic Centre, University of Lapland
  • Carl Folke

    Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University
  • Joern Fischer

    Faculty of Sustainability, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany
  • Alexandra Paige Fischer

    School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan
  • Bruno J Ens

    SOVON Vogelonderzoek Nederland
  • Tarsha Eason

    U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Durham, North Carolina 27711, USA
  • Victoria M Donovan

    University of Nebraska, Department of Agronomy & Horticulture, Lincoln, Nebraska 66583-0915
  • Alta de Vos

    Department of Environmental Science, Rhodes University, South Africa
  • Robert Costanza

    Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
  • Barbara A Cosens

    University of Idaho College of Law, Moscow, ID, USA
  • Joshua Eli Cinner

    Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia
  • Simone Athayde

    Florida International University
  • Arun Agrawal

    School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, USA
  • Michele L. Barnes

    Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia
  • Julia Baird

    Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, Brock University, Canada Department of Geography and Tourism Studies, Brock University, Canada
  • Jacopo A Baggio

    School of Politics, Security and International Affairs, University of Central Florida; National Center for Integrated Coastal Research, University of Central Florida
  • Marina Apgar

    IDS
  • John M Anderies

    School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, United States
  • William Neil Adger

    College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter
  • Albert V Norström

    Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden

Our History

Ecology and Society began with a bold idea and a desire to innovate. When an ecology lab was asked to reduce their journal subscriptions in the university library because of the high cost, a small group of students and professors responded in an unexpected way. They decided that since they were the ones who developed the research proposals, did the research, reviewed and wrote the papers to publish, and then paid to read the journals, that they would try something different. Their idea was to start their own journal on the internet and to make everything they published freely accessible.

It was the early 1990s. Most academics at the time were signing up for their first email accounts, and few had even glimpsed the world wide web. The team reached out to colleagues at the ESA and their vision caught the attention of an experienced managing editor, Lee Miller, who broke down the submission and peer-review process into all of the steps and charts necessary to automate the manuscript and publishing process. It took time and teamwork. A critical piece was convincing Buzz Holling, who embraced the ambitious idea with an equal measure of experience and adventure. In June of 1997, Ecology & Society became one of the first fully automated and online peer-reviewed science publications, and to our knowledge, the first ecological journal online. The bold experiment continues with E&S enthusiastically charting a course towards the future.

1995

An idea: Publish on the internet & make it free

1997

Inaugural issue of Conservation Ecology

2000

Resilience Alliance founded & becomes publisher

2001

Founding EIC Buzz Holling steps down

2004

Name change to Ecology & Society

2008

500 papers published!

2019 & 2021

End of an era: Carl Folke & Lance Gunderson step down

2022

New design launch