Mara Ranville

Dr. Mara Ranville currently lives along the Hudson River in upstate New York. She grew up in the Midwest, and has previously lived in Minnesota and next to the Pacific Ocean in California. She came to the Hudson River Valley to teach at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College, and recently spent two years in Oaxaca, Mexico, working with a community-based NGO to study water quality issues and how they affect the local population.

After receiving a B.A. (cum laude) in geology and environmental studies from Macalester College, she worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, and then earned a Ph.D. in environmental toxicology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research interests focus on the biogeochemical cycling of contaminants in the environment, the examination of industrial emissions to the atmosphere and aquatic systems, and the policy implications of cross-border transport of pollution.

She’s been lucky enough to do field work in a variety of environmental contexts, including freshwater streams in the Sierra Nevada, the San Francisco Bay estuary system, the Pacific and Caribbean oceans, intermittent waterways surrounding Oaxaca city, and shallow groundwater aquifers in the Midwest.

She also works as a scientific writer and editor, and teaches Yin Yoga in her spare time.