Allison Carruth is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, where she currently holds the Waldo W. Neikirk Chair for distinguished undergraduate teaching and chairs the Food Studies minor. She is an affiliate of the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics. Since 2015, she has been the founding director of the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS).

Her current research interests include environmental narrative and science communication; the role of artists and writers in American environmental and food justice movements; and the evolving relationships between ecology, sustainability and engineering in the US since the 1980s. For over a decade, she has worked on collaborations that aim to bridge ideas from and re-imagine the boundaries between the arts, humanities, and sciences.

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She is the author of Global Appetites: American Power and the Literature of Food (Cambridge 2013) and co-author with Amy L. Tigner of Literature and Food Studies (Routledge 2018). A co-founder of the multimedia public engagement project Play the LA River, she is involved in ongoing collaborations with artists, scientists and media makers.

In 2019, she is the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies at Princeton University.