Kristina Lyons

Kristina Lyons is an assistant professor of anthropology in the School of Arts and Sciences and the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH) at the University of Pennsylvania. She also holds affiliations with the Center for Experimental Ethnography (CEE) and the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies (CLALS). Kristina’s current research is situated at the interfaces of socio-ecological conflicts, social studies of science, and legal studies in Latin America. Her manuscript, Vital Decomposition: Soil Practitioners and Life Politics (Duke 2020), moves across laboratories, greenhouses, forests, and farms in the capital city of Bogotá and the Andean-Amazonian department of Putumayo. It weaves together an intimate ethnography of two kinds of practitioners – state soil scientists and small farmers – who attempt to cultivate alternatives to commercial coca crops and the military-led, growth-oriented development paradigms intended to substitute them.