Exploring mind, matter, and meaning in a time of planetary change.

Rachael Petersen is a writer, thinker, and convener working at the intersection of philosophy, ecology, and transcendence. She is currently a PhD student in Germanic Languages & Literatures at Harvard University, where her research explores the interplay of philosophy, science, and literature in the long nineteenth century, with a focus on how German thinkers engaged questions of mind, matter, and animacy across human and nonhuman life. Her work traces how developments in biology and psychology shaped metaphysical and political thought in ways that still shape us today, examining figures such as Gustav Fechner, Ernst Haeckel, and others.

Previously, Rachael directed Harvard’s Thinking with Plants and Fungi Initiative, convening interdisciplinary public programs that explored vegetal and fungal life in relation to questions of sentience, cognition, and care. She holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, where she researched panpsychism, pantheism, and the more-than-human world, and translated and introduced Gustav Fechner’s Nanna: Or on the Soul-Life of Plants.

Before turning to academia, Rachael spent over a decade advancing environmental policy and Indigenous rights. She served as Deputy Director of Global Forest Watch at the World Resources Institute and as Senior Advisor to the National Geographic Society, and conducted fieldwork in the Amazon, Borneo, and Arctic Canada as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow. Through her consulting company, Earthrise, she has designed multimillion-dollar climate strategies for leading philanthropies and advised global nonprofits on conservation and climate justice.

Her essays and poetry have appeared in Aeon, The Sun, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Tricycle, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She is also a trained Buddhist Ecochaplain in the Sōtō Zen tradition.

Through writing, convening, and collaboration, Rachael seeks to bridge speculative thought and grounded action — nurturing conversations that reimagine what it means to live meaningfully in a time of planetary transformation.

You can often find her powerlifting, playing piano, or running trails with her Australian Cattle Dog, Līlā.