Dara M. Wald is associate professor of environmental communication at Texas A&M University, where she coleads the Science Communications Lab and is a research fellow in the Institute for Science, Technology and Public Policy. Her research combines theory from psychology and policy to examine how trust, values, and power emerge, differ among audiences, and shape communication, collaborative processes, and policy outcomes in polarized environmental contexts. She is affiliated with the Texas A&M Center for Environmental Health Research and the Ecology of Bird Loss Project at Virginia Tech. She received a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University and a PhD from the University of Florida.
Her book with Anna L. Peterson, Cats and Conservationists: The Debate over Who Owns the Outdoors(Purdue University Press, 2020), examines how science and competing values shape public debate over contentious environmental issues. In 2022, Wald received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
Her project, “The Polarization of Science, Source Credibility, and the Public Good,” will examine how perceptions of scientific source credibility vary across the political spectrum and shape polarized responses to environmental policies.
May 2024
