Kaitlyn Alvarez Noli

Dr. Kaitlyn S. Alvarez Noli, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Health Sciences, holds a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs (College of Social Sciences and Humanities) and the Department of Health Sciences (Bouvé College of Health Sciences). She dedicates her research to inspiring change in communities that are disproportionately burdened by environmental harm. As an environmental justice scholar, Dr. Alvarez Noli confronts the ways local environmental disputes and public debate exclude the interests and concerns of marginalized groups and explores practices that can counteract this exclusion. Her current line of research examines the nuanced power relations in framing, coalition development, and advocacy involving farmworkers and intensive pesticide use.

Employing qualitative research methods, Dr. Alvarez Noli’s most recent project examined how stakeholders’ positionalities, claims, and rhetorical strategies around the legitimacy of pesticide use practices impact problem-solving efforts. She demonstrated how the dynamics of public debate reinforce racial inequality by ignoring farmworkers’ lived experiences and disregarding health disparities. Charitable foundations, such as The John Randolph Haynes Foundation, and research centers, such as the Newkirk Center for Science and Society at UC Irvine, have supported this research.

Dr. Alvarez Noli’s work has appeared in the International Journal of Science and Society, the Journal of Business and Economics, and Environmental Justice. Her article, “The Advocacy Campaign to Ban Chlorpyrifos: Pesticide Reform Under the Trump Administration,” explores grassroots advocacy campaigns to ban the hazardous insecticide chlorpyrifos and traces the Trump administration’s impact on campaign tactics and outcomes