Research
My research investigates how we govern crucial global environmental challenges and the social, political and economic forces that shape environmental policy outcomes.
I am particularly interested in the interconnections between subnational, national and global relations of power that shape how social and ecological environments are produced and reproduced. My work also demonstrates how spaces across the global North and global South that are presumed to be unlike are in fact deeply inter-related both historically and contemporarily. By understanding these connections, my work promotes more egalitarian and aware socio-ecological futures.
Presently, I am conducting research projects on climate resilience, green finance and renewable energy transitions.
Current Funded Research Projects
Governing Urban Flood Resilience in Global Capitalism
Principle Investigator
SSHRC
This project examines the aims and outcomes of climate resilience as a measure of flood control two urban centres across the global North-global South divide: Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Dhaka, Bangladesh. The book develops a relational International Political Economy and Environment (IPEE) framework to situate urban spaces and urban climate policy in global capitalism, outlining the relations of power shaping historically and contextually driven everyday experiences in both Amsterdam and Dhaka.
My understanding of resilience is informed by critical approaches to Global Risk Management, which I have published on in the Review of International Political Economy (RIPE). Chapters of my article-based dissertation have also been published in New Political Economy, Urban Geography and RIPE.
100 Resilient Cities
Co-Investigator
SSHRC
With Matthew Hoffmann and Laura Tozer (University of Toronto, Scarborough), Christopher Gore (Toronto Metropolitan University) and Michele Betsill (University of Copenhagen).
The project examines the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities Network (100 RC). The 1oo RC initiative was established in 2013, aiming to engage cities all over the world to catalyze change by thinking about and pursuing resilience and sustainability. The initiative, however, was abruptly shut down in 2019. As such, our project examines the initiation, functioning, and wind down of this major transnational initiative.
We seek to understand whether the 100 RC approach to urban resilience had the capacity of furthering a just and equitable transition at the urban scale, and the role of transnational networks in fostering just and equitable transitions therein.
New Frontiers in Green Finance
Principle Investigator
My present research project engages with the contemporary role of private financial actors in global environmental governance. I focus on the historical and contemporary role asset management firms play in driving and shaping global environmental governance and the resulting grounded outcomes across and within the global North and global South.
The key case of this project examines the emerging role of BlackRock capital, the world’s largest financial asset management firm worth over US$9 trillion, in global environmental governance.
In January 2020, BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink suddenly announced that the firm was to immediately transition its conventional investment strategy to a socially responsible framework premised on sustainability, resilience, and transparency. My research examines the outcomes of this initiative, with a focus on its investments in renewable energy at the urban scale across Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Initial outputs from this project will be part of a special issue on ‘Transformations versus Profits? The International Political Economy of Green Finance’ in Competition and Change with Milan Babic.