Sophia Borgias

Sophia Borgias is a social scientist who studies conflict and collaboration surrounding water, energy, and environmental governance in the arid Americas. Trained as a human-environment geographer and political ecologist, her work centers on questions of decarbonization, water justice, and coalition-building. Her most recent project focuses on community responses to the development of low-carbon energy and lithium in the Great Basin, with an emphasis on its implications for longstanding issues of water scarcity and conflict in that region. Previous work in the Western U.S. centered on rural-urban water transfers and the unlikely alliances of environmentalists, ranchers, and Tribes that have formed to protect rural landscapes and livelihoods from their impacts. Prior to that, her research focused on social movements contesting hydropower development in Chile. 

Dr. Borgias earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in Geography at the University of Arizona and holds a B.A. in International Studies and Spanish from the University of Oregon.

CURRENTLY ACCEPTING GRADUATE STUDENTS