Eve Darian-Smith, UCI global and international studies professor and chair, has received the Independent Publishers Book Award Silver Medal in Environment/Ecology for Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis (Stanford University Press). The honor recognizes her work examining the role economic decisions and partisan politics play in the mounting global climate crisis. Published in 2022, the book draws stark connections between extractive capitalism, ultranationalism and catastrophic wildfires that have scorched three countries on three different continents. The resulting devastation and on-going contributions to climate change, she argues, are a global crisis that calls for a new political, economic and moral framework that prioritizes people over profits and a global view that blurs boundaries between lands, seas and atmospheres.

• Watch our UCI ExpertsON feature with Darian-Smith as she explains the need to view this issue with a global lens, beginning with the way we think about and through wildfires. 
• Read a Q&A with the author.

Darian-Smith received her bachelor’s and law degrees at the University of Melbourne, Australia and spent three years working as a corporate lawyer before earning her master’s in anthropology at Harvard and her Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago. She joined the UCI faculty in 2017 following a 22-year appointment on the faculty at UC Santa Barbara. The Independent Publishers Award marks her fifth major book award and the second for Global Burning, which is her sixth book.