Elizabeth Oriel, PhD

Elizabeth Oriel is a researcher, writer, artist, and integrative healer with diverse research themes and practices. She often takes a systems approach and explores relational patterns in language and in lifeways between humans, other animals, and plants. Currently a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark, she studies how language perpetuates colonial processes and how language would be different if informed by fungal lives and networks. She earned a PhD in Global Studies at University of London as a Bloomsbury Scholar, based at both School of Oriental and African Studies and Royal Veterinary College. Her research in Sri Lanka explored relations among elephants, plants, and humans, documenting relational patterns across the last 70 years, leading to human-elephant coexistence and conflict. Previously, Elizabeth completed a Masters of Science in Conservation Biology from Antioch University New England. She has 19 papers published in books, journals, or conference proceedings. Her monograph in contract with Lexington Books explores how plants and human-plant relations shape humans in their subjectivity and collectives. Working with Social and Environmental Research Institute, she collaborated on projects investigating climate change adaptation planning and more. Elizabeth integrates philosophy, anthropology, and ethology in her writing and research, finding that the intersection of multiple disciplines offers broader perspectives of non-human animal, vegetal, and human wellbeing, lifeways, and communication. Art in the form of painting and creative writing is significant as practice and research method. Elizabeth’s healing work integrates herbs and nutritional supplements to balance metabolic and physiological pathways.