Karen Holmberg is an archaeologist who specializes in volcanism as a way to examine long-term intersections humans have had with environmental change. Her main interests lie in the creative integration of Earth and social science data and vantages to better understand risk, the role of prehistoric and contemporary art in representing climate changes, and how the environmental past informs the present and future.  

Holmberg holds a PhD from Columbia University and has taught on environmental disaster and perceptions of nature as a postdoctoral fellow in the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown and as a lecturer in the Archaeology Center at Stanford. She has done archaeological and ethnographic fieldwork in Athens, Belize, Hawaii, Papua New Guinea, Panama, and the eastern United States and is currently beginning a new field project in Patagonia. At the IPK, Karen organizes the Cities, Cultures, and Climate Change Working Group.