I am a cultural anthropologist, currently an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. Starting Fall 2026 I will be an Assistant Professor in the Yale University Department of Anthropology. My work is at the intersection of environmental anthropology, feminist science and technology studies, and political ecology. My research examines how the environment, raw materials, and resources become meaningful in new ways as scientists develop technologies for making green or renewable products. I study the commonsense assumptions about nature and production that underlie visions of circular bioeconomies and plant-based materials. This research is based in Brazil and the US. I received my PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Rice University. I’m also a coordinator of the Ethnography Studio.

Molecular transformation shapes social transformation.

Amid fossil-fuel-driven climate change, finding sustainable replacements for everyday fuels and materials made from petroleum (like plastic) has been a pressing concern for decades. Plant-based products that replace oil-based versions are increasingly common, from compostable cups one might use in a cafe, to bioplastic shopping bags one might receive at the grocery store. Many people, though, often don’t know what specific plants were actually used to make these products, including where these plants were grown and by whom. My current book project, Raw Materiality: Making Sugarcane into Sustainable Futures, investigates how and for whom it becomes possible to envision plant-based futures without envisioning the plants themselves. It examines the case of sugarcane-based bioproducts, such as biofuels and bioplastics, made in Brazil.

How scientists envision and make plant-based renewables in turn shapes cultural conceptions of energy transition and social change. When we make our stuff, we also make ourselves. Some ways of making our stuff/selves have become sedimented over decades and centuries, leading to them to seem like the only way to do things. Raw Materiality provides tools for unsettling and questioning these ways of making our stuff/selves, in order to open up new possibilities for just, sustainable futures.

I’ve also started two new research projects. The first is on biomanufacturing—the commercial-scale production of fuels and chemicals from agricultural biomass and wastes—in the US and Brazil. The second is on wastewater resource recovery in California, as part of a collaborative NSF project titled Retooling Extraction that explores shifting modes of extraction of and around water in response to anticipated challenges at the water-food-energy nexus.

My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Rice University, Harvard University, the Brazilian Studies Association, and Haverford College. Prior to starting my doctoral studies I worked as a research assistant in a molecular biology lab at the University of California San Francisco.

Contact me at kulrich[at]g.harvard.edu