Jeffrey Lockwood Ph.D.

Jeffrey Lockwood, Ph.D., earned a B.S. in biology from New Mexico Tech and a Ph.D. in entomology from Louisiana State University. He worked for 20 years as an insect ecologist at the University of Wyoming working to develop better management practices and forecasting models for grasshoppers and locusts, pioneering a method that is now used across the western states, publishing more than 100 scientific papers, and receiving $2.5 million in funding. At the peak of his scientific career, he accepted a split appointment between the department of philosophy and the MFA program in creative writing, where he uses his ecological experience as the raw material for teaching and research in environmental ethics, philosophy of ecology, and nature/environmental writing. He has published three collections of environmental/spiritual essays through Skinner House: Grasshopper Dreaming (2002), Prairie Soul (2004), and A Guest of the World (2006). He has written for Orion, Conservation Magazine, New York Times, Boston Globe, and London Times. His books include: Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier (Basic, 2004), Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War (Oxford, 2008), Philosophical Foundations for the Practices of Ecology(Cambridge, 2010), and The Infested Mind: Why Humans Fear, Loathe and Love Insects (Oxford, 2013). His work has been honored with a Pushcart Prize, the John Burroughs award and inclusion in the Best American Science and Nature Writing.