Chien-Yi Lu
Chien-Yi Lu’s research interests include climate change, neoliberalism, democracy, inequality, politics of EU, and animal rights. Her book Surviving Democracy: Mitigating Climate Change in a Neoliberalized World (Routledge, 2020) places neoliberalism at the center of our ecological plight. She is a Podcaster and an op-ed writer. Without a green thumb, she is not gardening at Chung Chung Kan. However, she tries her best to be a "good ancestor" by reducing plane rides and animal consumption to close to zero. More importantly, her activism is grounded in her research, which traces the root cause of the deterioration of both democracy and the environment by unpacking the neoliberalized social, economic and political structure. She is currently examining how fascism gains grounds as the dominant organizing logic of society as neoliberalism bows out, and how degrowth might be a plausible counterforce that keeps civilization from plunging into an ecological as well as political dystopia. Other than being the mom of Niu Niu, a street dog she rescued 15 years ago, she has helped bettering the lives of romaning animals for over a decade by mainstreaming neutering (rather than culling) as the more effective and humane way of population control.
Email: chienyilu@gate.sinica.edu.tw