I am the author of Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice (MIT Press, 2007), Fantasy Islands: Chinese Dreams and Ecological Fears in an Age of Climate Crisis (University of California Press, 2015), and, most recently, Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger (University of California Press, 2020). I edited the collection Sustainability: Approaches to Environmental Justice and Social Power (NYU Press, 2018) and have written over 70 articles and book chapters. Across a wide geographical terrain (New York, California and Shanghai) and scales and issues, my research holds constant a sustained focus on political ecology, urbanization, and planning, including links and interactions between the political economy of spatial form and social relations with nature.
My research is on environmental justice and inequalities, the relationship between social movements and policy implementation, and the areas of public and environmental humanities at the intersection of three interdisciplinary fields: environmental, urban and ethnic studies from the vantage point of American Studies.
I have been an invited keynote at international conferences and events in Sweden, Japan, Germany, China, Italy, Abu Dhabi, France and Canada. I have spoken at over 80 universities and colleges in the U.S. ranging from the Ivy League institutions, community colleges, public universities, and liberal arts colleges. I have been interviewed widely in print and on the radio and am deeply committed to public scholarship, speaking at arts institutions, non-profits, state agencies, service organizations and community groups interested . I am also an active mentor for first generation and low-income students in undergraduate and graduate education, with a 20+ year involvement with the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, most recently as a Mellon Faculty Mentor.
