Alastair T Iles

Alastair Iles works as Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM) at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Division of Society & Environment. He is an environmental policy and social science scholar whose research now focuses on the politics and practice of sustainability transitions, particularly around industrial chemicals and sustainable food systems. In the area of food and agriculture, Iles works across agroecological transitions in the Global North, food sovereignty, policies for diversified farming systems, soil health, farmer decision-making, and participatory campus foodscape mapping. In the area of chemicals, Iles co-founded the Berkeley Food Institute and served as co-faculty director between 2013 and 2017. He remains active in the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry, for which he served as a co-PI of the IGERT Systems Approaches to Green Energy grant. Currently, he is a join editor-in-chief of the Sustainability Transitions domain at Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, an UC Press journal. Iles is the only born-deaf professor at UC Berkeley, works on climate change and disability issues, and is part of the Faculty Coalition for Disability Rights. He helped build the ESPM Disability Collective, which has produced a guide for integrating disability justice into teaching and advising.