Breena Holland

Associate Professor
610-758-5982
STEPS 586
Ph. D., University of Chicago, 2005

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’s current research on climate justice uses data on planetary biophysical boundaries to argue for applying maximum limits on individual freedoms having the greatest aggregate impact on planetary life support processes. She is also currently engaged in several local projects related to air pollution, environmental justice, and government accountability. 

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.