Dr. Maria Isabel Espinoza is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University. Her research and teaching areas of expertise are environmental communication, the sociology of climate change, and the climate and health nexus. Her work has been published in Social Science & Medicine, Environmental Sociology, Big Data & Society, and Climatic Change.

She is the co-author, with Melissa Aronczyk, of A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of Environmentalism (Oxford University Press, 2022), which won the 2023 NCA's Roderick P. Hart Outstanding Book Award in the Political Communication division and the 2022 Outstanding Book Award in Public Relations, Innovation, Development and Educational Achievement (PRIDE) in the Public Relations division.