Theo is a PhD student in Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research explores the power relations upon which fossil fuel companies depend and the strategies climate justice campaigners deploy to counter them. During his field research, Theo spent time with frontlines climate justice communities in British Columbia, Richmond California, and Standing Rock. He is currently writing his dissertation, entitled Petro-Hegemony and the Carbon Rebellion: Strategies and Tactics on the Frontlines of Climate justice. This year he has also developed and taught a new course in Global Studies called The Global Climate Justice Movement. His research interests include social movement strategy, energy and resource extraction, climate justice, and theories of hegemony. His work has been published in Environmental Sociology, the Journal of World Systems Research, and Resilience.

 

Theo is also active with the Santa Barbara chapter of 350.org and its campaigns to prevent new oil drilling in the region. He was UCSB’s campus coordinator for the Fossil Free UC divestment campaign for four years and remains a member of the scholar-activist collaborative, the Climate Justice Project. Theo has also been an active participant in the global Climate Justice Movement for several years and has been involved in local campaigns to ban fracking and other modes of extreme extraction, as well as youth-led efforts to hold negotiators accountable at the annual United Nations climate talks. In addition, he has collaborated with UC and California State University faculty and staff, facilitating efforts to streamline teaching climate justice across educational institutions in California. Theo is a Mellon Sawyer Seminar in Energy Justice Graduate Fellow and has been involved in developing syllabi and workshops to support community engaged scholarship through this fellowship.