Lauren LaFauci is assistant professor of environmental humanities at Linköping University (LiU). She holds a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan, specializing in American studies (from 1400 to 1900), environmental humanities, and the history of slavery. She is currently completing Peculiar Natures, a book manuscript on the related histories of racial and environmental ideas in the pre-Civil War United States. Her work has been supported by
Formas, the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development; the American Philosophical Society; the Andrew Mellon Foundation; the Harrison Institute for the Study of American History, Literature, and Culture at the University of Virginia; and the Franklin Institute for North American Studies at the University of Alcalá, Spain, among other sources. She has taught over 40 different courses in the areas of American studies, environmental humanities, and writing at universities in Germany, Sweden, and the United States, where she also held the position of assistant professor of English, gender studies, and sustainability studies before relocating to Sweden in fall 2015. Lauren is a project leader of Herbaria 3.0,
a digital citizen humanities project collecting the intertwined stories
of plants and people, and she serves as an international liaison for the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE).