Breena Holland is Associate Professor of Political Science and the Environmental Initiative at Lehigh University. She earned her doctorate and master's degree in Political Science at the University of Chicago and she holds bachelor's degrees from the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management and the Department of Jurisprudence and Social Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Her primary research is in the areas of environmental policy and political theory and focuses on issues of valuation, justification, and participation in contemporary approaches to policy analysis and administrative rulemaking. She is the author of Allocating the Earth: A Distributional Framework for Protecting Capabilities in Environmental Law and Policy (Oxford University Press, 2014) and she has published in various journals, such as the Journal of Environmental Politics, Politics, Groups, and Identities, the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, and Political Research Quarterly.
Professor Holland is currently working on two research projects addressing air pollution in the Lehigh Valley. The first project, which is a collaboration with Lehigh and Northampton counties, involves creating a distributed air monitoring network for fine particulate pollution (PM2.5) in the Lehigh Valley. The second project is on ethylene oxide pollution in Allentown, PA, and is a collaboration with Dr. Hyunok Choi in Lehigh’s Health College, the PA Department of Environmental Protection, and Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley.
Professor Holland also has ongoing research projects related to climate adaptation politics and justice for non-human animals.
Professor Holland serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Environmental Values and the Journal of Environmental Ethics. She is active in the “Environmental Political Theory” section of the Western Political Science Association, where she has served as section chair and on the “best paper” award committee.
Selected Publications:
Holland, Breena. 2022. “Capabilities, Future Generations, and Climate Justice,” in Steven Gardiner (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Intergenerational Ethics, Oxford University Press
Holland, Breena. 2020. “Capabilities, Well-Being, and Environmental Justice” in Brendan Coolsaet (ed.), Environmental Justice: Key Issues. Routledge
Holland, Breena. 2017. “Procedural Justice in Local Climate Adaptation: Political Capabilities and Transformational Change.” Journal of Environmental Politics 3/17: 391-412
Linch, Amy and Breena Holland. 2017. “Cultural Killing and Capability Conflict.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 18/3: 322-336
Holland, Breena. 2014. Allocating the Earth: A Distributional Framework for Protecting Capabilities in Environmental Law and Policy. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press.
Holland, Breena. 2008. “Ecology and the Limits of Justice: Establishing ‘Capability Ceilings’ in Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities {Special Issue on Ideas Changing History) 9/3: 399-423.
Holland, Breena. 2008. “Justice and the Environment in Nussbaum’s ‘Capabilities Approach’: Why Sustainable Ecological Capacity is a Meta-Capability.” Political Research Quarterly 61/2: pp.319-332.