is a social science distinguished by its attention to the relation of humanity to the earth, in two regards. The first concerns the interaction of people with nature, including the extraction of natural resources, the environmental impact of people and their activities, and the effects of natural forces on society. The second concerns the spatial organization of societies at all scales from the local to the global (and from minutes to millennia) and the production of place, territory and landscape by human imagination and activity.
We build on Berkeley Geography’s long tradition of cutting-edge research that combines diverse methods to address questions of public importance in creative and compelling ways. Our faculty and graduate students work all around the world and explore an enormous range of topics: forest and range utilization in the North America, urban development in China, agrarian change and resource extraction in Africa, conflict and human rights in Latin America, and much more. We examine borders and migration, conservation and development, globalization and governance, while attending closely to the roles of race, gender, and class and of science, technology and economy in shaping the world around us.
We encourage work that spans disciplinary divides, both between physical and human geography and between geography and other fields. We are proud of our longstanding commitment to advancing theoretical inquiry through research that is solidly grounded in the real world and to teaching and scholarship that address public problems and needs.
Our regular and adjunct faculty include:
SHARAD CHARI
Geography as history of the present and as Earth/world-writing, social theory, political economy, development, agrarian studies, labor and work, racial/sexual capitalism, Black radical tradition, biopolitical struggle, oceanic humanities, photography, South Asia, South Africa, Indian Ocean.
DESIREE FIELDS
Economic geography; urban theory; financialization; digital platforms and real estate; urban social movements; constructions of markets; geographical political economy; housing justice
YOU-TIEN HSING
Political economy of development in East Asia (especially China), power and space, cultural and environmental politics, urbanization
JAKE KOSEK
Cultural politics of nature and difference; cultural geography, science and technology studies; critical race theory; critical cartography; biopolitics; human and the non-human; and environmental politics
JOVAN SCOTT LEWIS
Black Geographies, Economic geography, Caribbean Thought, decoloniality, reparations and repair, poverty and inequality, race (blackness), the Caribbean (Jamaica) African-American communities (Tulsa, OK)
NATHAN SAYRE
Environmental geography; social dimensions of rangeland ecology and management; environmental history; scale; political economy; climate change; food; regional focus: southwestern US, northwestern Mexico, arid and semiarid rangelands
HARLEY SHAIKEN
Latin America, labor, information technology, the organization of work, global economic integration, trade
BRANDI SUMMERS
Black geographies; urban geography; race and urban aesthetics; design, planning, and architecture; cultural politics of difference
CLANCY WILMOTT
Critical cartography; media geographies; critical GIS and data studies; cultural memory and landscape; politics of representation, textuality and visuality; digitalities, lived, made and inherited