Research

Climate change requires drastic economic change, and fast, concerted political action. Climate change also raises questions about how we define environmental and climate justice, and how to center marginalized voices in any political and economic transition. In my research, I investigate these questions from the bottom up. Applying a movement-centered lens, my research investigates the role new environmental movements play in defining climate justice and promoting political change.

In addition to the book project, I have broader interests in contemporary political thought, as well as political theology. I am particularly interested in how religion and spirituality have been used to legitimize and delineate political authority. In examining these questions, I am interested in reconceptualizing the agency-structure debate in political theory and developing a more dynamic model which recognizes the symbiotic interaction individuals have with their environment. 

Book Project

Climate Justice, Movements, and Political Change (in progress)

Building on critical theory and critical political ecology, the book project investigates how environmental and climate movements contribute to defining the meaning of environmental and climate justice, how they push for political change, as well as how they interact with each other and political institutions at both the domestic and global level. I argue that assessing environmental movements underlines the importance of radical reform as an iterative process of change that centers existing forms of agency and their contribution to definitions of justice.

A full abstract and sample chapters are available on request.  

Article

(2021) Hobbes’ God is Hidden and Idle, Political Theology, DOI: 10.1080/1462317X.2021.1970091

This article investigates Hobbes’ contradictory references to God, and argues that these can be resolved if viewed through the lens of two prominent conceptualizations of God – the reformist hidden God (deus absconditus) and the Epicurean idle God (deus otiosus). Contrary to scholars who argue that Hobbes’ God does not exist by nature and only comes into being through his representees, I argue that in the Leviathan, God may be incomprehensible or idle, but that God exists prior to their representees. With this characterization, Hobbes manages to assert God’s ultimate supremacy and challenge the authority of the Church while simultaneously reinforcing the necessity to submit to the sovereign. 

Working Papers 

“Post-Politics, Movements and Climate Justice” (In Progress)

This paper scrutinizes the post-political critique of environmental movements and argues that it obscures the contribution movements make to repoliticizing the concepts of environmental and climate justice. I demonstrate that environmental and climate movements pursue a “symbiotic approach” that combines individualist moral and structural approaches to demand political transformation to address climate change. Thus, I argue that movements not only politicize the issue of climate change but show a way out of the technocratic reform versus revolution impasse. More generally, this paper cautions against radical status-quoism and makes a case to assess and analyze the potential for political and social transformation from the bottom up. 

“Prayer and Protest: How Climate Movements politicize Spirituality” (In Progress)

This paper investigates the political role of references to spirituality by new environmental movements and argues that these extend the scientific focus of environmental demands. I demonstrate that movements’ reference to spirituality challenges the modern conception of the environment as a resource for exploitation, and emphasizes the transcendental value of the environment and humans’ place in it.  

Drafts of the working papers are available on request.

Public Scholarship

“Una respuesta Meliana a Mearsheimer”, Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica, 2022. https://revistafal.com/una-respuesta-meliana-a-mearsheimer/

"Notas sobre las teorías de la conspiración”, Revista Común, 2020, https://www.revistacomun.com/blog/notas-sobre-las-teorias-de-la-conspiracion

“Las manos invisibles de la pandemia en Nueva York”, Revisa Común, 2020, https://www.revistacomun.com/blog/las-manos-invisibles-de-la-pandemia-en-nueva-york

“La voluntad pública y su papel en las elecciones presidenciales mexicanas”, Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica, 2018, http://revistafal.com/la-voluntad-publica-y-su-papel-en-las-elecciones-presidenciales-mexicanas/