Moran, Emilio

Emilio Moran is a world-renowned social anthropologist who has studied and published in tropical agriculture, social science, ecology, economics, and, most recently, earth observations from satellites.

Moran’s true discipline is asking the right questions and merging human and environmental sciences to get a holistic understanding of some of the world’s most crucial problems—climate change, land use—and a project he pioneered some 30 years ago: determining the potential of the humid tropics for intensive agriculture.  

Moran joined MSU’s Department of Geography in January 2013. He is the university’s 11th member of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition to CSIS, Moran contributes to the new Center for Global Change Science as well as the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations.

In 2011, Moran delivered the Rachel Carson Distinguished Lecture "Rethinking Human-Environment Interactions." He also received an honorary degree from MSU.