Rachel Carson College Faculty Fellows
Sikina Jinnah is Rachel Carson College's new faculty chair!
The Chair of the Faculty is an Academic Senate member, other than the Provost, who is elected by the college Faculty to serve a two year term, and will serve as a member of the Executive Committee.
Dr. Jinnah is an Associate Professor in the Politics Department, an affiliated faculty member in the Environmental Studies Department, and a 2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Her research focuses on the shifting locations of power and influence in global environmental governance, and in particular the role of transnational actors in environmental decision-making. Her most recent projects examine how key norms in global climate politics shape power relations, the role of U.S. preferential trade agreements in shaping environmental policy in trading partner nations, and the politics of climate engineering governance.
- Title
- Professor
- Division Social Sciences Division
- Department
- Sociology Department
- Center for Critical Urban and Environmental Studies
- Phone
- Website
- Office Location
- Rachel Carson College Academic Building, 208
- Office Hours Wednesdays 9-12
- Mail Stop Rachel Carson College Faculty Services
- Mailing Address
- 1156 High Street
- Santa Cruz CA 95064
- Faculty Areas of Expertise Sociology, Urban studies, Cultural Studies, Environmental Studies
- Courses SOCY 105A Classical Sociological Theory; SOCY 177 Urban Sociology; SOCY 177E Eco-Metropolis; SOCY 260 Culture, Knowledge, Power; SOCY 201 The Making of Classical Theory
Research Interests
Urban sociology, geography, urban environmental studies, urban political ecology, disaster and crisis, sustainability studies, housing, media and cultural studies, social movements, social theory, California studies.
Selected Publications
Articles:
2024. “Relational Geographies of Urban Unsustainability: The entanglement of California’s Housing Crisis with WUI Growth and Climate Change,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. July 29. Co-authored with Hillary Angelo, Elena Losada, and Christopher C. Wilmers, For special issue on climate change in California.
2023. “Environmentalizing Urban Sociology” City & Community, 22(4), 257-265. Co-authored with Hillary Angelo.
2021. “Seeking Shelter: How Housing and Urban Exclusion Shape Exurban Disaster” in Sociologica, 15(1), 67–89.
2021. “The Progressive Disjuncture on Land Use and Housing: Learning from the Leftmost City.” New Labor Forum, Fall 2021
Chapters in books:
2025. “De-Naturing the City: Race, Real Estate, and the Genealogy of “Urban Ecology” as Metaphor and Practice.” in Ryan Centner and Leonard Nevarez eds. Oxford Handbook of Urban Sociology. Co-authored with Hillary Angelo. forthcoming.
2021. “First Publics’ as Knowledge Producers: Integrating Students into Organic Public Sociology” in L. Hossfeld, E. B. Kelly, and C. Hossfeld (eds). The Routledge International Handbook of Public Sociology. London and New York: Routledge Press, Co-authored with R. London and S. McKay
Books:
2017. The City is the Factory: New Solidarities and Spatial Strategies in an Urban Age. Cornell University Press.
2014. Crisis Cities: Disaster and Redevelopment in New York and New Orleans. Oxford University Press. Co-authored with Kevin Fox Gotham.
2008. Branding New York: How a City in Crisis was Sold to the World. Routledge.
