Biographical Information

Miriam Greenberg is Professor of Sociology at the University of California Santa Cruz, and co-director of the Center for Critical Urban and Environmental Studies. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the City University of New York Graduate Center, and is the author of Branding New York:  How a City in Crisis was Sold to the World (Routledge, 2008); Crisis Cities: Disaster and Redevelopment in New York and New Orleans (Oxford, 2014), co-authored with Kevin Fox Gotham; and The City is the Factory: New Solidarities and Spatial Tactics in an Urban Age, co-edited with Penny Lewis (Cornell, 2017).  She has also undertaken engaged, public-facing research projects exploring urban and environmental justice issues in California, including the Critical Sustainabilities project, which can be found at: https://critical-sustainabilities.ucsc.edu/, and (with Steve McKay) the project No Place Like Home, on the experience of the affordable housing crisis in Santa Cruz County, which can be found at: http://noplacelikehomeucsc.org/.

She is currently P.I. on the project WUI Research for Resilience:  Addressing California’s Climate, Conservation, and Housing Crisis, which is part of the UCOP Climate Action Research Initiative.  A recent publication in PNAS lays out the conceptual framework for this project: “Relational geographies of urban unsustainability: The entanglement of California’s housing crisis with WUI growth and climate change.”(2024)

Research Interests

Interests include social theory, urban studies, geography, political ecology, disaster and crisis, sustainability studies, media and cultural studies, social movements, and housing. Research has focused in particular on New York City, New Orleans, Buenos Aires, and California.

Previous Education/Training

2000 – Ph.D. Sociology with Highest Distinction, City University of New York.
1986 – B.A. Urban Studies with a minor in Media Studies, Eugene Lang College at the New School for Social Research.