I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine. As a geographer, I study the political economy of fossil fuels by analyzing the intersections of extractivism, neoliberalism, and authoritarianism. My current research projects investigate the limits and possibilities of shifting finance away from fossil fuels and towards low-carbon futures in ways that repair historical injustices.

I am working on my first book project, Fossil Fuel Divestment as Method, which follows land-based struggles against extractive mines, pipelines, and ports across the Asia Pacific and the United States. Drawing on transnational comparisons and connections, the book delineates how fossil fuel divestment movements have deployed three land-based modalities of struggle—blockades, counter-mapping, and litigation—to challenge structures of neoliberalism and state-sanctioned violence. Tracing the intermeshed modalities of divestment campaigns across global fossil fuel and financial supply chains, Fossil Fuel Divestment as Method illustrates how and why movements to divest from fossil fuels must not be severed from land-based struggles for Indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice.

I am also working on a second book project which examines the multiple ways in which global fossil fuel and financial industries are fueling right-wing authoritarianism, borders, and the climate crisis. Rooted in a comparative analysis of investment banks, private equity firms, asset managers, and insurance companies across the Global North and South, the project situates the political economy of fossil fuel finance within twentieth and twenty-first century histories of neoliberalism and authoritarianism.

My research has been featured in a variety of scholarly as well as popular forums, including BBC Radio 4, Outlook Planet, Energy World, Economic and Political Weekly, and the Centre Tricontinental. I also have a long history of working on fossil fuel divestment, labor, and environmental justice campaigns, both on and off campus. I continue to collaborate with faculty, staff, students, and movement-based activists on campaigns focused on shifting finance away from fossil fuels.