I am currently an Associate Professor of Justice, Community and Leadership at Saint Mary's College of California in the Bay Area, where I also teach in the Global and Regional Studies and the Earth and Environmental Science programs. My research and teaching interests connect sustainability and social justice, applying participatory and ethnographic methodologies. I teach courses on environmental justice, sustainability and development through the lenses of postcolonial/decolonial theory, feminist geography and cultural studies.
I received my PhD from the Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management at the University of California Berkeley (2015) and have a Masters in Integrative Bio-sciences from the University of Oxford (2008), where I was an Inlaks Scholar. In Spring 2019, I was invited to the Alba Viotto Visiting Professorship in Sociology at the University of Geneva, where I taught a graduate class on Sociology from Below.
My research combines critical and action-oriented thinking with community-engaged research praxis to explore the politics of and pathways to just sustainability transformations. In a time of exacerbating inequality, enduring poverty and widespread climate disruption, I firmly believe that we cannot talk about sustainability without a serious consideration of its intersections with social justice, equity and oppression. Questions around who participates in community-driven sustainability initiatives and local governance processes; who has access to public spaces and for what sanctioned uses; and the broader question of how sustainability movements either reinforce or dismantle existing structures of oppression, are critical in every context. In doing this work, I collaborate with scholars in critical geography, sociology, environmental science and policy studies, and with community organizations and practitioners.
Please browse my website to learn more about my research and publications. The Teaching tab also has links to several undergraduate syllabi and an articulation of my teaching philosophy.
I received my PhD from the Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management at the University of California Berkeley (2015) and have a Masters in Integrative Bio-sciences from the University of Oxford (2008), where I was an Inlaks Scholar. In Spring 2019, I was invited to the Alba Viotto Visiting Professorship in Sociology at the University of Geneva, where I taught a graduate class on Sociology from Below.
My research combines critical and action-oriented thinking with community-engaged research praxis to explore the politics of and pathways to just sustainability transformations. In a time of exacerbating inequality, enduring poverty and widespread climate disruption, I firmly believe that we cannot talk about sustainability without a serious consideration of its intersections with social justice, equity and oppression. Questions around who participates in community-driven sustainability initiatives and local governance processes; who has access to public spaces and for what sanctioned uses; and the broader question of how sustainability movements either reinforce or dismantle existing structures of oppression, are critical in every context. In doing this work, I collaborate with scholars in critical geography, sociology, environmental science and policy studies, and with community organizations and practitioners.
Please browse my website to learn more about my research and publications. The Teaching tab also has links to several undergraduate syllabi and an articulation of my teaching philosophy.
