Awards

2014. U.C. Humanities Research Institute: Residential Research Group, UC Irvine, in "Urban Ecologies."

Present-2010. Faculty Fellow at the Center for Collaborative Research for an Equitable California.

2010. Winner of the Robert E. Park Book Award for Branding New York: How a City in Crisis, from the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.

Grants

2023 - 2025 UCOP Climate Action Research: "WUI Research for Resilience: Addressing California’s Climate, Conservation & Housing Crises." $1,600,000

2023 - 2025 Wildlife Conservation Network - California Wildlife Program: "Urban Displacement or Exurban Desirability? Understanding the Drivers of Housing Expansion in the Wildlands Urban Interface." $300,000

2023 - 2025 Center for Coastal Climate Research: "Designing Just and Fire Resilient Landscapes in California." $100,000

2023 - 2024 Worker's Rights Policy Initiative: "Center for Labor and Community." $500,000 annually

2020 UCSC Office of Research - Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Seed Grant and bridge funding grant for "New Frontiers in Urban Sustainability: Exploring Interacting Dynamics of Housing, Habitat, and Environmental Justice in Exurban California.” $20,000

Fall 2017 - Spring 2018 Academic Senate Committee on Research - SRG: Co-Principal Investigator, COR Special Research Grant: “New Frontiers for Urban Sustainability: Exploring Possible Links between the Affordable Housing Crisis and Puma Habitat Fragmentation in
Santa Cruz and the Bay Area” (with Chris Wilmers, ENVS) $25,000

2015-2016 University of California’s Humanities Research Institute Engaging Humanities Grant for "No Place Like Home: Voices and Visions of the Housing Crisis in Santa Cruz." $25,000 

2013-12. University of California’s Humanities Research Institute, California Studies Workgroup Grant for “Critical Sustainabilities: Analyzing Competing Discourses of Urban Development in California.” $18,000.

Public Lecture or Forum Participation

2016. “Beyond Ecotopia: Displacement and Uneven Sustainable Development in the Green City" Democratizing the Green City Symposium, New York University.

2016. "Beyond Ecotopia: Green Displacement and the Challenge of Equity in the Sustainable City." Urban Studies Lecture, Vassar College.

2015. “What is to be Sustained?  Exploring the Promises and Pitfalls of Urban Sustainability,”Sociology Colloquium, UC Berkeley  

2014. “Competing and Contested Sustainabilities in California and Beyond” Institute for Public Knowledge and Urban Democracy Lab, New York University.

2013. “Whose City? What Image?: The Role of Urban Branding in Post-Crisis Urban Contestation.” Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong.

2013. Talk in honor of David Harvey for "Social Justice and the City 1973-2013: 40th Anniversary Celebration", for the Graduate Program in Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons The New School for Design and The Center for Place Culture and Politics, City University of New York.

2011. "The Abandoned Movie Set: Art, Space, and the Politics of Crisis in 1970s-Era New York City." Talk given for workshop "Cultural Landscapes of Boom and Bust" for the “Creative City Limits: Urban Cultural Economy in a New Era of Austerity” conference. Department of Geography, University College London.

2011. "Seminario Abierto: Branding New York: How a City in Crisis was Sold to the World." Área de Estudios Urbanos del Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani de la Facultdad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Papers Presented and Sessions Organized at Professional Meetings:

2016. “What is to be Sustained? Toward Critical Sustainability Studies.” Day of panels at the American Association of Geographers Meeting, San Francisco

2015. “Challenging Uneven Development: Right to the City Organizing in the Wake of Disaster,” for the Community Responses to Disaster and Crisis Panel, Eastern Sociological Society Meetings, New York City.

2015. Presider, “Presidential Session: Loft Living: Twenty-five Years Later” In honor of Sharon Zukin's book. Eastern Sociological Society Meetings, New York City.

2014 “What Is to be Sustained? Toward a Critical Theory of Urban Sustainability.” Sustainability and Social Justice panel, International Sociological Association World Congress, Yokahama, Japan.

2013 “Situating Sustainability in Buenos Aires: "Ciudad Verde" as a Global Urban Campaign,” Latin America Latin American Studies Association Meeting, Washington D.C.

2013. "Critical Sustainabilities: Competing Discourses of Urban Development in California," American Association of Geographers in Los Angeles.

2012. "Landscapes of Risk and Resilience: The Socio-Spatial Production of Environmental Crisis in the U.S. and Latin America." RC24 panel: "Current Research in Environmental Sociology," International Sociological Association.

2012. "New Urban Imaginaries in the Branded City: Towards a Critical and Comparative Approach." RC21 panel: "The role of Design and Social justice in 21st-century Cities." International Sociological Association, Buenos Aires.