KarenÌýBailey

  • Assistant Professor
  • ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
Address

SEEC S106A

Office Hours

Please email Dr. Bailey at karen.bailey@colorado.edu to schedule office hours.

Education

  • BA (Ecology & Evolutionary Biology) Princeton University
  • MS (Wildlife Ecology & Conservation) University of Florida
  • PhD (Interdisciplinary Ecology) University of Florida

Research Interests

  • Climate adaptation/resilience
  • Sustainable rural livelihoods
  • Human health and well-being
  • Human-wildlife conflict
  • Justice and equity in STEM

/Bio

Karen Bailey is interested in human-environment interactions, climate change, and sustainable rural livelihoods. She is an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist and combines social science research with environmental and ecological data to understand feedbacks between communities and their environments, how we can build resilience to climate change, and how to support landscapes that meet human needs and sustainability goals. She also has an emphasis on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in environmental fields and STEM more broadly and is committed to research that supports, amplifies and engages the most vulnerable among us. Her current projects focus on climate adaptation in southern Africa, human health and well-being in east Africa, barriers to entry in natural resource fields, just and equitable climate change research, and urban communities and environmental engagement.

Note to Prospective Graduate Students

Karen Bailey is not accepting new students for Fall 2025.

A Note to Prospective ENVS Honors Undergraduate Students

I am interested in advising undergraduate honors students that align with my research interests in human-environment interactions, human health and the environment, climate change and climate adaptation, and justice and equity in STEM. Students working with me could collect new data via surveys or interviews, analyze existing data related to human livelihoods or review existing literature. If you are an undergraduate student already in the ENVS program and you are interested in working with me on an honors thesis research project, please send me an email with a) a CV or resume, and b) a brief (half-page) outline of your honors thesis research idea.