PRESS RELEASE

March 10, 2017

Bron Taylor, Professor of Religion and Nature at the University of Florida, has been selected as the 2017 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture (ISSRNC). The award honors scholars who have made outstanding contributions to the study of religion, nature and culture, and whose work has a relevance and eloquence that speaks to scholars and the public. Taylor, who founded the ISSRNC in 2007, will receive the award during the banquet at the ISSRNC’s upcoming Mountains and Sacred Landscapes Conference (April 20-23, 2017 at the New School in New York City).

Taylor has been a central figure in the articulation and construction of religion and nature as a field of study. He earned his Ph.D. in Social Ethics from the University of Southern California (1988) and began his teaching career at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. While there, he led a faculty initiative to develop an Environmental Studies program and served as its director from 1993-2000.

In 2002 Taylor assumed the Samuel S. Hill Ethics Chair at the University of Florida, where he was recruited to anchor the world’s first graduate program focusing on religion and nature. In 2011 he was selected as a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany.

Taylor is the editor of the award-winning, multi-volume Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (2005) and has authored or edited five books including the landmark Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (2010). In 2007 Taylor founded, and has since edited, the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture.

Taylor’s long-term research trajectory has centered on grassroots environmentalism and on the role of the affective, spiritual and ethical dimensions of human experience on environmental mobilization. In Dark Green Religion he analyzed the emergence, impact, and prospects of “green religions” around the world. Most recently, he has co-authored a comprehensive research review of the role of religion in environmental behavior.

Taylor’s research, publications, presentations, initiatives, and courses can be found at his website: www.brontaylor.com

The ISSRNC is a community of scholars engaged in critical inquiry into the relationships among human beings and their diverse cultures, environments, religious beliefs and practices. The Society’s Board of Directors cordially invites all individuals interested in the scholarly investigation of religion, nature, and culture to join and to participate in ISSRNC activities.