Environmental justice provides an opportunity to engage in a wide array of research questions regarding the causes of and community responses to social and environmental inequity.
Epidemiology, Data Science & Environmental Change:
EJ asks hard questions about risk and vulnerability analysis. How can we quantitatively measure environmental injustice? How do we understand the cumulative effects of racial and socioeconomic disparities with environmental hazard and health exposures? How do we understand human dimensions of environmental change, in relation to problems of social equity?
Public Health & Participatory Research Methods
Community-based participatory research methods are a fundamental component of much of the public health-oriented EJ research. How do we pursue equitable collaboration between academic and communities and/or community-based researchers?
Ethics & Legal Theory
What are the ethical foundations of EJ, and its implications for theories of justice. What are some of the jurisdictional challenges of global environmental problems, e.g. internationalization of risks that arise from international and domestic law (legislation and treaties) regulating the waste trade.
Sociology, Social Movements, and Education
Studying environmental protest movements is an important part of EJ research. When do environmental justice movements arise and under what conditions do they succeed or fail? How do we effectively teach EJ histories in the classroom?
Humanities & Critical Theory
EJ research uses perspectives from critical race theory and ethnic studies to understand contemporary environmental movements. As environmental justice and human rights movements join forces, how do we understand the globalization of the environmental justice movement (e.g. international dimensions of inequity and the flow of resources between states that a climate treaty might require)?
Epidemiology, Data Science & Environmental Change:
EJ asks hard questions about risk and vulnerability analysis. How can we quantitatively measure environmental injustice? How do we understand the cumulative effects of racial and socioeconomic disparities with environmental hazard and health exposures? How do we understand human dimensions of environmental change, in relation to problems of social equity?
Public Health & Participatory Research Methods
Community-based participatory research methods are a fundamental component of much of the public health-oriented EJ research. How do we pursue equitable collaboration between academic and communities and/or community-based researchers?
Ethics & Legal Theory
What are the ethical foundations of EJ, and its implications for theories of justice. What are some of the jurisdictional challenges of global environmental problems, e.g. internationalization of risks that arise from international and domestic law (legislation and treaties) regulating the waste trade.
Sociology, Social Movements, and Education
Studying environmental protest movements is an important part of EJ research. When do environmental justice movements arise and under what conditions do they succeed or fail? How do we effectively teach EJ histories in the classroom?
Humanities & Critical Theory
EJ research uses perspectives from critical race theory and ethnic studies to understand contemporary environmental movements. As environmental justice and human rights movements join forces, how do we understand the globalization of the environmental justice movement (e.g. international dimensions of inequity and the flow of resources between states that a climate treaty might require)?
EJ Champions
There are a few, isolated examples of current efforts and research at Stanford that contain elements of environmental justice. Postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and selected faculty are exploring human-centered fields of inquiry in tandem with natural and physical sciences to understand and further scholarship in justice and equity within environment and resources.
Rodolfo Dirzo is currently Bing Professor in Environmental Science, in the Departments of Biology Earth System Science, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Associate Dean for Integrative Initiatives in Environmental Justice at Stanford University. Dirzo studies ecology, natural history, conservation biology, and biocultural diversity, with an emphasis on evolutionary ecology of species interactions in a changing world. He has a longstanding dedication to K-12, undergraduate, and graduate education, particularly with respect to engaging underserved communities.
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Sibyl Diver is an interdisciplinary environmental scientist, a lecturer at Stanford University in the Earth Systems Program, and co-director for the Stanford Environmental Justice Working Group. She does community-engaged research on Indigenous water governance from an allied perspective, focusing on Pacific Northwest salmon watersheds. This includes research on co-management (or collaborative management) arrangements between Indigenous communities and state agencies. She received her PhD from Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, where she helped build the Karuk-UC Berkeley Collaborative, a group supporting the Karuk Tribe's eco-cultural revitalization strategy in Northern California. Current work includes conducting a social impact assessment of Klamath dam removal with the Karuk Tribe.
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Emily Polk is a writer, teacher, scholar, and mother who teaches and writes about community-led responses to climate change, the mobilization of social movements, and climate equity. She developed and taught some of the first courses at Stanford University on Gender and Climate Change, Communicating Climate Change, and Environmental Justice Storytelling. Prior to getting her doctorate, she worked as a human rights and environment–focused writer and editor for nearly ten years around the world, helping to produce radio documentaries in Burmese refugee camps, and facilitating a human rights-based newspaper in a Liberian refugee camp. Her book, Communicating Global to Local Resiliency: A Case Study of the Transition Movement, was released in 2015.
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Michelle Wilde Anderson, a law professor, has been working with cities in distress across the United States, including most recently in Puerto Rico. She is researching how places like Stockton, Detroit, and Flint can change course from their declining population and struggling economies into more equitable, vibrant, and healthy communities.
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Dena Montague is an EJ lecturer in the Earth Systems Program. Prior to Stanford, Dena was at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC Santa Barbara, where she also worked with David Pellow at the UCSB Global Environmental Justice Project. She is the Founder and Executive Director of ÉnergieRich, an international social enterprise establishing local manufacturing of clean energy technology in West Africa. Her research focuses on energy justice through decentralized production; impacts of Global North clean energy transition on climate/environmental justice in the Global South; and environmental data justice. Prior to her doctoral studies she was a Research Associate at the World Policy Institute where she analyzed questions concerning the impact of extractive sector management on democracy, development and human rights in Africa.
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Khalid Osman is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research spans the use of mixed quantitative-qualitative methods to assess public perceptions of water infrastructure, water conservation efforts, and the management of existing infrastructure systems to meet the needs of those being served by the systems. He currently is focused on the operationalization of equity in water sector infrastructure, conceptualizing equity in decentralized water and sanitation systems, water affordability, and stakeholder-community engagement in sustainable civil infrastructure systems for achieving environmental justice.
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Debbie Sivas, a law professor, runs the Environmental Law Clinic that has worked on multiple environmental justice cases. These cases range from protecting ancestral Pit River Indian Tribal land from geothermal mining, to fighting to enforce water quality standards in the central valley of California where a disproportionate percentage of those impacted are low-income and people of color.
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Elliott White Jr. is an assistant professor of Earth System Science. He is a coastal ecosystem scientist that studies the effects of saltwater intrusion and sea level rise (SWISLR) on vegetation in the coastal land margin. His research experience in wetlands spans the North American Coastal Plain of the US, in addition to constructed prairie potholes in Iowa. His interdisciplinary approach to research draws from ecology, hydrology, biogeochemistry, and remote sensing. He is expanding his research to also understand the effects of SWISLR on humans living in the coastal zone. He received a BS in Biology and Animal Ecology from Iowa State University in 2015 and PhD in Environmental Engineering Sciences from the University of Florida in 2019.
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Michael Wilcox Is an Indigenous/Native American scholar (Yuman descent) who has taught at Stanford University since 2001. His current research involves documentation of Indigenous Rebellions and in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as ‘Aina based research and education with Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) communities in Hamakua Hawaii. He serves as the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area and is a founding board member of the Muwekma Ohlone Cultural Preservation Land Trust. His recent Publications include The Pueblo Revolt and the Mythology of Conquest: an Indigenous Archaeology of Contact (University of California Press) and is co-editor of Rethinking Colonial Pasts Through Archaeology (Oxford University Press).
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Stanford Interdisciplinary Centers and Institutes that align with EJ
- Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity
- WSD Handa Center for Human Rights and International Justice
- Earth Systems Program
- Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources
- Haas Center for Public Service
- McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society
- Stanford Law and Policy Lab
- Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health
- Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
- Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
- Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford
- Precourt Institute for Energy
- O'Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm