Jennifer Parker

Co-Director, Programs, Archives & Digital Initiatives 

Jennifer Parker is a Professor and Founding Director of the OpenLab Collaborative Research Center at UC Santa Cruz. An artist, researcher, and educator, she works across art, ecology, biology, and technology, creating collaborative frameworks that connect scientific inquiry, creative practice, and public engagement. Her research and teaching focus on environmental art, digital media, social practice, and interdisciplinary approaches to climate and ecological change.

As a Co-Investigator and primary author of the grant that established the UC Climate Action Arts Network (UC CAAN), Parker has played a central role in shaping the network’s vision, interdisciplinary collaborations, public programming, and digital infrastructure. Her leadership includes developing the Arts & Ecology Festival and the California Art and Climate Archive, which share and cultivate opportunities for conversation, creative research, and new perspectives on art and ecological change, as a means to bring artistic practice, ecological knowledge, and community experience together, allowing new forms of collaboration, collective inquiry, and response to environmental change to emerge.