Tarla Peterson is the Boone and Crockett Chair of Wildlife & Conservation Policy, and is a professor at Texas A&M University. She also serves as a guest professor of environmental communication at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Adjunct Professor of Communication at University of Utah.
Ms. Peterson studies intersections between communication, policy, and democracy. Her research has been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Swedish Research Council for Environmental and Spatial Planning, and various government agencies (i.e., U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Dept. of Energy, Swedish Nature Management Agency). Her scholarship includes Social Movement to address Climate Change: Local Steps for Global Action (2009),Discursive Constructions of Climate Change: Practices of Encoding and Decoding-special issue ofEnvironmental Communication(2009), Green Talk in the White House: The Rhetorical Presidency Encounters Ecology(2004), and Sharing the Earth: The Rhetoric of Sustainable Development(1997). Ms. Peterson also maintains an active Theory to Practice Program, including design, facilitation and evaluation of community-based planning efforts related to energy and environmental issues.