People
Nellie Amosi
Nellie Amosi is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS), where she contributes to the Clean Energy and Environment Legacy Transition (CELT) Initiative project and the Next-Generation Sustainable Industrial Automation Solutions project in collaboration with Schneider Electric. Her work supports the advancement of equitable, data-driven climate and energy solutions in urban and regional contexts. Prior to her current role, Dr. Amosi worked on the development of energy justice indicators for the offshore wind energy project.
She earned her Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences from the University of Connecticut, where her research focused on mapping and analyzing the impacts of extreme climate events on livelihoods and ecosystem services. Her work in Southern Africa combined climate indicators with socioeconomic data to assess vulnerabilities and resilience in marginalized communities.
Her professional background includes research roles with the CT Department of Public Health and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Internationally, she coordinated research at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR-ICRAF), where she helped develop sustainable land use and food security policies tailored to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Through her work, Amosi is committed to fostering equitable climate transitions, improving recovery from extreme climate events, and advancing environmental justice, particularly for underserved communities.
Michelle Wilde Anderson
Michelle Wilde Anderson teaches local government law, poverty, environmental justice, and state/local climate law at Stanford Law School and the Stanford School of Sustainability. Her book The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America (published by Simon & Schuster) was awarded the 2023 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize for Nonfiction. Her other writing has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and dozens of other publications. The American Law Institute (ALI) awarded her their Early Career Scholars Medal in 2019. Anderson is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Housing Law Project and a board member for the East Bay Community Law Center in Oakland. She lives with her family in San Francisco.
Jason Beckfield (Seminar Leader)
Jason Beckfield studies sociological dimensions of energy transition, including indigenous energy transitions on the US Gulf Coast, community engagement for energy transition and climate resilience on Cape Ann, and the pragmatist social mechanisms of decarbonizing transportation. Beckfield’s Climate Sociology Lab, which includes doctoral students DA Evrard, Major Eason, and Sammy Wyman, alongside undergraduate research assistants in the Fellows at the Forefront program, is addressing the following research questions:
1. What are the sociological causes and consequences of energy transitions from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources?
2. How do the social processes of decarbonization (climate mitigation) and resilience (climate adaptation) projects affect the speed and success of such projects?
3. As especially interesting cases combining historical dispossession, current climate vulnerability, current renewable resources, and current resilience capacity, how do indigenous communities in the United States relate to energy transition?
Beckfield and Evrard’s recent article in the Annual Review of Sociology sets an agenda for the sociology of energy transitions, which extends earlier research on the US Gulf Coast. Since concluding that project, Beckfield has continued to partner with the Lowlander Center of Louisiana on participatory action research on indigenous energy transitions, supported by the Salata Institute, the Johnson Climate Fund, and a US Department of Energy SOLVE-IT prize. In addition to collaborating with the Lowlander Center, Beckfield also works with colleagues at the Graduate School of Design on energy transition and resilience on Cape Ann. He also worked as Senior Adviser to the US Department of Transportation’s Climate Change Research and Technology Program.
Beckfield’s climate sociology research builds on his earlier work on the relationships between institutional change and changing patterns of social inequality. Since joining the Department of Sociology at Harvard in 2006, Beckfield has taught a range of undergraduate and graduate courses, including social inequality, globalization, quantitative methods, population health, the teaching practicum, the article-writing practicum, and, most recently, climate sociology. He has also served in a variety of administrative positions at Harvard, including Chair of Sociology, Director of Graduate Studies, Director of Undergraduate Studies, and Associate Director of the Center for Population and Development Studies.
Diane E. Davis
Diane E. Davis is the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) and Domain Head of the Publics track in the Master of Design Studies Program (MDes). Trained as a social scientist, Davis’s research focus is urban governance, with a special interest in how citizens make claims in order to make cities just and inclusive, including through social movement activism. Current projects focus more directly on sustainability, climate change, and ecological challenges. In 2020-21 Davis served as member of a team sponsored by the UK-Mexico Pact for Sustainability that examined farmer-industrialist conflicts over water in Mexico; in 2022 she led research funded by the World Bank/IFC on disaster resilience in the Philippines and has collaborated with the UN-Habitat’s recently founded Urban Economy Forum (UEF) to advance global progress on SDG #11 goals (Cities and Communities). In 2023 Davis was named a CIFAR Fellow and Co-Director of its Humanity’s Urban Future program.
Cristina Garcia Fernandez
Cristina Garcia Fernandez is professor of economics in the Department of Applied, Public, and Political Economics at Complutense University of Madrid. She is the author of Impactos sociales del cambio climático (Social Impacts of Climate Change), published by La Catarata in 2023. She earned her PhD in Economic Sciences in 1998, with a doctoral thesis titled El cambio climático: un estudio económico (Climate Change: An Economic Study).
Since 2014, Garcia Fernandez has coordinated the master’s program in the European Union and the Mediterranean. Her research interests include climate migration, climate change and security, gender and climate change, adaptation and mitigation, and smart cities and smart villages. She collaborates on various research projects at national and regional levels and has authored numerous articles related to climate change and smart territorial development.
Relevant Links:
- Social Impacts of Climate Change: Impactos sociales del cambio climático
- ORCID: Orcid
- MASTER EUROMED: Master euromed
Patrick Greiner
Patrick Trent Greiner’s research centers on providing greater insight into the complex coconstitution of social inequalities, environmental changes, and their consequences. His teaching interests are organized around the theories and methods that facilitate understanding of simultaneous and reciprocal change in social and ecological systems.
Greiner’s work has been published in journals such as Environmental Sociology, Environmental Research Letters, Nature Cites, Nature + Culture, The Journal of Land Use Science, The Journal of Classical Sociology, Rural Sociology, and Human Ecology Review, among others. He has also been featured in international outlets such as The Conversation, El Globo News, and Phys.
Valerie Nelson
Valerie Nelson is a steering committee member of the Cape Ann Climate Resilience Collaborative, which brings together local climate action non-profits, municipalities, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and UMass Boston. Since 2020, the group has focused on extreme storm scenarios, ecological restoration strategies, and cultural and ethnographic studies—including research in Gloucester’s environmental justice neighborhood. Upcoming work will explore community engagement strategies, governance structures, climate finance, and gray and green infrastructure.
Previously, Nelson led the Water Alliance, a network of experts and advocates in 21st-century water management. Under her leadership, the Alliance convened multi-stakeholder conferences, secured funding from federal, state, and foundation sources for local demonstration projects, and published work on water policy and institutional reform.
Nelson has played an active role in Gloucester’s government–community relations and served two terms on the Gloucester City Council. Before moving to Gloucester, she was an instructor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a visiting assistant professor at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning. She holds degrees in economics from Harvard University, the London School of Economics, and Yale University.
Sarah Page
Sarah Page is an architect, urban designer, and teaching associate in urban planning and design. Her work emphasizes multi-scalar methods of analysis across variable forms of human habitation. Her teaching at the GSD centers on mechanisms of design thinking, exploration of urban design research methodologies, and forms of communication across disciplines. Her scholarly work and research focus on building rural theory across geographies united by the global cotton industry.
Page also serves as a Research Associate at the Office for Urbanization at Harvard, where she was the project lead on Regenerative Landscapes: From Conservation to Adaptation, a multi-year scenario planning initiative on regional climate adaptation in coastal Massachusetts. She currently leads Resilient Practices: Developing Community Capacity, a project examining governance and financial systems in relation to community engagement and infrastructure development. Prior to her work at Harvard, she collaborated with several distinguished design practices across the Southeastern United States.
Page earned her Master of Architecture in Urban Design with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she received the Druker Traveling Fellowship and the Award for Academic Excellence in Urban Design. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Auburn University, where she participated in the Rural Studio, a design-build program focused on rural communities. Page was born and raised in Athens, Alabama, where social infrastructure and vernacular architecture continue to inspire her work.
Rebecca Pearl-Martinez
Rebecca Pearl-Martinez is the Executive Director of the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS), a university-wide interdisciplinary institute convening over 100 faculty across all schools and colleges. IGS specializes in research to support an equitable energy transition. At BU, Pearl-Martinez works with faculty to develop and implement interdisciplinary research projects and leads research translation efforts related to offshore wind energy justice and extreme heat.
Before entering academia, she spent two decades working in international policy on the social dimensions of energy and climate with organizations including UNDP, UNEP, USAID, Sustainable Energy for All, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and Oxfam, among others.
Prior to joining BU, she was a Research Fellow and Head of the Renewable Equity Project at the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy (CIERP) at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a Visiting Lecturer on climate change governance at Tufts University. Her Ph.D. research in the Department of Geography at Durham University focuses on urban energy transition and auction design in Chile.
Hannah Perls
Hannah Perls is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and Senior Attorney with the Harvard Environmental & Energy Law Program (EELP). Her work focuses on equitable disaster preparedness and response and federal environmental justice initiatives, including Tribal-led adaptation and cumulative impacts analysis in state permitting.
She previously worked as the resource development director for Cristosal, a human rights non-profit based in El Salvador, providing legal and humanitarian assistance to families internally displaced by violence. She also worked as an environmental scientist specializing in coastal Superfund sites for AnchorQEA. Perls received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her B.A. with honors in environmental science and sustainable development from Columbia University. She serves on the Environmental Justice Legal Advisory Board for Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE) in Roxbury, MA.
Rosina Philippe
Rosina Philippe is Council Elder and Traditional Knowledge Keeper of the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha Tribe. She is a lifetime resident of coastal Louisiana, a Council Elder and Traditional Knowledge Keeper of the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha Tribe. Philippe serves as vice president of the Lowlander Center and is a Council Member and former President of the First People’s Conservation Council (FPCC).
Her work is focused on partnering with leaders from other communities and various organizations/groups to work for environmental sustainability, along with preservation and restoration of coastal, traditional and historied communities/territories. These alliances are forged to address issues of: climate change, economic instability, environmental justice, gentrification and coastal restoration/preservation, issues that are familiar to most of our communities and have plagued their people for generations.
Philippe speaks on recognizing accountability and identifying contributing factors and entities in relation to these issues. She is a firm believer that people facing similar problems, through informed education and information sharing, have the power to affect positive long-term changes; and through collaboration, take charge of their own destinies, building toward more resilient and sustainable lifeways.
Frances B. Frances B.
Frances Roberts-Gregory is an international climate policy consultant, environmental curriculum developer, and vegan ecowomanist storyteller. Trained as an environmental scientist, climate anthropologist, and community geographer, Roberts-Gregory researches the role and political priorities of U.S. Afrodiasporic communities and women’s organizations at United Nations climate negotiations.
Roberts-Gregory has familial roots in coastal North Carolina (Duplin and Sampson Counties) and rural Georgia (Augusta and Emanual County). Born in Newark, New Jersey, she traveled between various cities within North Carolina and Arlington, Virginia (the D.C. metro region) during her primary years. Roberts-Gregory later earned a BA in Environmental Science, Sociology, and Anthropology from Spelman College and a PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation research explored Black and Indigenous women’s everyday resistance to environmental violence and solutions for climate policy, sustainability, and blue-green infrastructure in Gulf Coast Louisiana.
Roberts-Gregory formerly served as a Climate Justice Program Officer at the Foundation for Louisiana, as a Program Director of Leadership Development at the Initiative for Energy Justice at Northeastern University, and as a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) within the Salata Institute for Climate & Sustainability. She currently serves on the boards of the Hive Fund for Climate & Gender Justice and the HBCU Green Fund.
Sara Shostak
Sara Shostak is Professor of Sociology and Health: Science, Society and Policy at Brandeis University, where she serves as the inaugural director of the Vic ‘63 and Bobbi Samuels ‘63 Center for Community Partnerships and Civic Transformation (COMPACT). Broadly, her research seeks to understand how diverse social actors perceive, experience, and act to transform the material conditions that shape health inequalities in the United States.
Shostak is the author of Exposed Science: Genes, the Environment, and the Politics of Population Health (University of California Press, 2013) – which won the Robert K. Merton Book Award from the ASA’s Section on Science, Knowledge and Technology and the Eliot Freidson Outstanding Publication Award from the Medical Sociology Section – and Back to the Roots: Memory, Inequality, and Urban Agriculture (Rutgers University Press, 2021). Her recent articles include “Food and Inequality” (Annual Review of Sociology) and “Fit Around the Farm: A Holistic Approach to Health Promotion for Elders” (SSM – Qualitative Research in Health). Among her current projects is “Building Climate Resilience via Collective Memory: An Oral History of Flooding in Waltham, MA,” which aims to contribute to a more resilient, just, and equitable future by centering residents’ voices in discussions about flood risk assessment and mitigation strategies.
Shostak’s research and teaching have been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Merck Family Fund, and Mass Humanities, among others.
Benjamin Sovacool
Benjamin Sovacool is Professor of Earth and Environment at Boston University, where he is the Founding Director of the Institute for Global Sustainability. He is also Professor of Energy Policy at the Bennett Institute for Innovation & Policy Acceleration at the University of Sussex Business School. Sovacool is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, the Academy of Social Sciences, and the Academy of Europe (Academia Europaea).
He was formerly Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex Business School, and Director of the Center for Energy Technologies and University Distinguished Professor of Business & Social Sciences at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Sovacool works as a researcher and consultant on issues related to energy policy, energy justice, energy security, climate change mitigation, and climate change adaptation. His research focuses on renewable energy and energy efficiency, the politics of large-scale energy infrastructure, the ethics and morality of energy decisions, designing public policy to improve energy security and access to electricity, and building adaptive capacity to the consequences of climate change.
Kristina Peterson
Kristina Peterson co-created the Lowlander Center with coastal communities to address the complex social and environmental impacts of a changing coast. She centers the inclusion of local communities and their knowledges in robust collaboration and problem solving. Guided by the principle “Think globally, act locally,” Peterson has spent her life as an applied social scientist and community activist focused on sustainable and just communities.
Much of her work has involved long-term, holistic, community-based responses to disasters. She has contributed to large-scale regional networks responding to national disasters, including technological-environmental crises, acts of racial violence, economic upheaval, and extreme weather events. Peterson is a founding board member of both the National Hazards Mitigation Association and the Gender and Disaster Network.
Her work spans safe, natural, and built environments; holistic planning; adaptation; and resettlement. She has been active in efforts around land stewardship, climate adaptation land trusts, and rematriation of land. Peterson advocates for the creation of a federal Department on Climate Adaptation, modeled on the 1934 Resettlement Administration. She is part of the National Science Foundation’s Rising Voices, Changing Coasts Coastlines and People program and participates in ongoing dialogue with the United Nations rapporteur on internal displacement and justice.
She also practices permaculture and treasures her cat and extended Lowlander family.
Cassandra Swartz
Cassandra Swartz is a senior at Harvard College, pursuing a concentration in Environmental Science and Public Policy, a secondary in History, and a language citation in Portuguese. She is currently working on her senior thesis at Boston University, exploring if and how microplastics enhance the microbial vectoring of fecal coliform diseases in Astrangia poculata. In addition to completing her senior thesis research, Cassandra will also be interning at Northeast Legal Aid this summer. She has previously worked as a research assistant with Professor Jason Beckfield in a project with Harvard College, the Pointe au Chien (PACIT) French-Indian Tribe, and Lowlander Center for a federal grant focused on procuring funds for energy infrastructure. Cassandra also values community engagement, volunteering in several organizations throughout her undergraduate career such as Y2Y and Grupo Mulher Brasileira.
Dustin Tingley
Dustin Tingley is Professor of Government in the Department of Government at Harvard University, where he has extensive experience improving teaching and learning. He co-founded ABLConnect, initiated and organized the Harvard Government Department’s annual poster session, and has led interdisciplinary conferences on causal mechanisms, active learning, and negotiation in international relations.
As Deputy Vice Provost, Tingley launches and oversees initiatives to improve teaching at and by Harvard. He also serves as faculty director for both the VPAL Research Group and the Harvard Initiative on Learning and Teaching (HILT).
His research interests include international relations, international political economy, statistical methodology, and experimental approaches to political science. His book on American foreign policy, Sailing the Water’s Edge, was published in fall 2015 and received the Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book published in the field of U.S. national policy. Recent projects explore public attitudes toward global climate technologies and policies, as well as the intersection of causal inference and machine learning in the social sciences.
Tingley received his B.A. in political science from the University of Rochester, magna cum laude, with a minor in mathematics, and his Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University.
Charles Waldheim
Charles Waldheim is a North American architect and urbanist based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His research explores the relationships between landscape, ecology, and contemporary urbanism. Waldheim developed the theory of landscape urbanism in response to the industrial economies and emergent ecologies of the American city, and curates the Harvard GSD’s Future of the American City podcast series on this topic.
Waldheim is author, editor, or co-editor of numerous publications, including Landscape as Urbanism: A General Theory (Princeton University Press) and The Landscape Urbanism Reader (Princeton Architectural Press). He is the John E. Irving Professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he directs the Office for Urbanization. He also serves as the Ruettgers Curator of Landscape at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
Waldheim is the recipient of numerous fellowships and visiting appointments, including the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome; the Visiting Scholar Research Fellowship at the Canadian Centre for Architecture; the Sanders Fellowship at the University of Michigan; and the Cullinan Chair at Rice University. He has been a visiting scholar at the Architectural Association in London and the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany.