Originally from Tennessee, David Pellow developed an early appreciation for the outdoors through family trips to the Great Smoky Mountains and weekends spent foraging for gooseberries, blueberries, and blackberries with his father and brothers. Those experiences helped spark a lifelong interest in the relationship between people, nature, and social change.
Today, David is the Dehlsen Chair and Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he also serves as Director of the Global Environmental Justice Project. His teaching and research focus on environmental justice, sustainability, social movements, human-animal relationships, and social inequality. He is the author of several books on environmental justice, animal rights, and activism, and his work has been featured in major media outlets including the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, NPR, the Chicago Tribune, the Denver Post, and Mother Jones. In addition to his academic work, David has served on the boards of numerous nonprofit organizations, including Greenpeace USA, International Rivers, the Community Environmental Council, the Environmental Health Coalition, and the Fund for Santa Barbara. A longtime Santa Barbara resident, David enjoys exploring local trails and open spaces, with favorite spots including Pratt Trail and Snyder Trail in Los Padres National Forest, as well as Arroyo Burro Beach and the Douglas Family Preserve. In his free time, he especially enjoys meeting and playing with other people’s dogs.