Karen Bradshaw is a public intellectual Transforming how we relate to nature and one another.

She is a Professor of Law and Alan Matthenson Research Fellow at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Arizona State University. Bradshaw is also a Senior Sustainability Scientist at the Global Institute of Sustainability, a Faculty Fellow at Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and a Faculty Affiliate Scholar at the New York University School of Law Classical Liberal Institute. Her work has been featured by major media outlets including Forbes, Fortune, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, National Public Radio, NPR's Planet Money, and The New York Times and has won numerous grants and awards.

Karen Bradshaw is the author of several books, including the forthcoming Depolarized: How Nature Can Save America (Columbia University Press) and the internationally acclaimed book Wildlife as Property Owners: A New Conception of Animal Rights (University of Chicago Press). Wildlife as Property Owners was featured in the Official 2022 GRAMMY gift bags and received a “highly recommended” review in Forbes. Bradshaw also co-edited the leading volume on wildfire law and has published over twenty-five academic articles on a variety of legal topics. Her work has a global impact, with lectures delivered in more than a dozen countries and scholarship translated and reviewed in Spanish, French, and Mandarin.

Her teaching and research span the subjects of Property, Contracts, Environmental Law, Natural Resources, and Biodiversity. She is the founder and director of Radically Reimagining: The Human Relationship with Nature, an initiative that co-creates new and better environmental futures and administers the Reimaginer Award, recognizing visionary sustainability thought leaders. Bradshaw has held in leadership roles in government, private sector, and nonprofit organizations, including serving as an Academic Consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States, preparing an Office of the Chairman report.

Bradshaw’s work is deeply interdisciplinary, involving collaborations with artists, economists, scientists, philosophers, nongovernmental organizations, professional sports teams, and government agencies. She was the featured poet at the 2025 Rivers event in Aspen Colorado, presenting her chapbook The Law of the River. She maintains a working art studio and is the editor of a forthcoming art book.

Bradshaw earned a JD with honors from University of Chicago Law School, an MBA from California State University, Chico and her BS in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a Regent’s Scholar. She clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and served as the the Koch-Searle Research Fellow at New York University School of Law. Raised in the rural communities of Klamath (population 700) and McCloud (population 1,200) California, Bradshaw now divides her time in the Sonoran desert and a working vegetable farm in Oregon.

Her work invites people to radically reimagine the human relationship with nature.