Cornelia Butler Flora is a Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Iowa State University and Research Professor at Kansas State University. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University, specializing in the sociology of development and population studies.
Cornelia has served as Director of the Population Research Laboratory at Kansas State University, Chair of the Technical Committee of the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program, Head of the Department of Sociology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Director of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, and a member of the Board of Directors of CONDESAN (Council for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Region) and Winrock, International, past president of the Rural Sociological Society, the Community Development Society, and the Agriculture and Human Values Society, and consultant for international organizations and foundations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the U.S. and Canada.
Her primary research interests are the intersections of human communities and agro-ecosystems, and sustainable intensification in the context of climate change, with an emphasis on gender. She has taught courses and done research on rural development and in Spain as a Fulbright Professor, and Uruguay (including periods as a Fulbright Professor), as well as Argentina and Peru.
Ph.D. in Development Sociology, Cornell University, 1970
M.S. in Rural Sociology, Cornell University, 1966
B.A. in Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, 1965
