Anneliese (Lisa) Palmer

Anneliese (Lisa) Palmer is a Research Professor of Science Communication, a distinguished Journalist-in-Residence at the GW Alliance for a Sustainable Future, and Senior Editor and Education Lead at Planet Forward. She teaches sustainability communication, where students learn about theory-driven and research-based approaches to communicating environmental and sustainability issues. Palmer has covered climate change, the environment, and sustainability since 2007 and continues to write news features regularly. She is actively engaged with undergraduate life at GW and serves as a sustainability communication mentor through meetings with students, her work with Planet Forward’s collegiate consortium, seminars, and other activities. Her book, “HOT, HUNGRY PLANET: The fight to stop a global food crisis in the face of climate change” (St. Martin’s Press; 2017) chronicles solutions, innovations, and responses for building a climate resilient food system.

Palmer actively participates in the national and international discourse on science, sustainability and the environment through writing and publishing, research, speaking, developing and leading seminars, and providing analysis. She has written for a wide range of publications including the Nature family of journals, Yale E360, The Guardian, Nautilus, The New York Times, The New Republic, Ensia, Slate, and many others. Her book, HOT, HUNGRY PLANET, chronicles her travels around the world to report on the responses and urgent innovations needed to feed a growing population amid climate change and other crises.

She was previously a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., where she conducted research on global food security, resilience, and policies related to sustainable agriculture. From 2015 to 2020, she was a senior fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center at the University of Maryland. In 2018, Palmer was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center residency on science for development. She is a professional member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, the National Association of Science Writers, and the D.C. Science Writers Association, and The Author’s Guild. She is a graduate of Boston University and Simmons College in Boston.