Jill Lindsey Harrison

  • Professor of Geography
  • Environmental Justice
  • Environmental Politics
  • Political Ecology
  • Agriculture and Food Systems
  • PhD, University of California at Santa Cruz, 2006
  • HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
  • ENVIRONMENT-SOCIETY
Address

 

Grad Students

Annika Hirmke

Research Interests

My research helps identify the cultural relations and political economic processes that disproportionately situate members of racially marginalized, Indigenous, and working-class communities in dangerous spaces and precarious conditions that contribute to inequalities in life opportunity, illness, and death. I also identify ways the state, social movements, and other institutions can more effectively redress those inequalities. I have done so through various cases of environmental and workplace inequality in the contemporary United States.

Currently, my research is focused on helping to create stronger public institutions that better support environmental justice (EJ). Notably, I study state and federal environmental regulatory agencies in the United States, and I am especially interested in how regulatory agency staff respond to critiques from anti-regulatory elites and EJ movements. I evaluate how environmental regulatory agencies’ practices affect overburdened and vulnerable communities, and I identify regulatory reforms that help state institutions better support those communities. I do so by bringing lessons from political ecology and science and technology studies (STS) into EJ studies. One of my current projects analyzes state-level cumulative impact laws and regulations and the conditions under which they help rectify shortcomings of conventional environmental assessment.

This is part of a broader research project examining the disappointing pace of environmental regulatory agencies’ “environmental justice” (EJ) programs and policies as a case through which to understand why, despite reducing environmental hazards for the nation overall, agencies have not improved conditions in places enduring the greatest environmental burdens. Other scholars have shown that material factors outside the control of agency staff – budget cuts, limits to regulatory authority, industry pressure, and underdeveloped analytical tools – constrain the possibilities for EJ reforms to regulatory practice. My research builds upon that work by demonstrating how agencies’ EJ reform efforts are also undermined by elements of regulatory workplace culture that transcend changes in administration. At the same time, my publications and outreach offer practical suggestions for how agencies can more effectively reduce environmental inequalities that deeply affect the lives of so many Americans, and they show how agencies’ EJ staff – those tasked with developing EJ reforms – endeavor to change both regulatory practice and regulatory culture from the inside out. You can read about my research in articles in Salon, The Coloradan, and Public Books.

I have advised U.S. government agencies on their environmental justice reform efforts through serving on the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. I have been invited to present my research on the challenges facing government agencies’ EJ reform efforts to the executive leadership and other staff at numerous environmental regulatory agencies, including at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), California EPA, the California Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Minnesota’s Environmental Quality Board, the California Fish and Game Commission, and the California Natural Resources Agency.

In another recent project, my colleagues and I identified cultural challenges facing universities’ efforts to address environmental precarity through “engineering-for-development” (EfD) programs that train engineering students to help solve problems in developing communities, including pertaining to shelter, drinking water access, sanitation, and affordable energy. I conducted this NSF-funded research in collaboration with Shawhin Roudbari (Environmental Design, University of Colorado), Jessica Kaminsky (Engineering, North Carolina State University), Santina Contreras (Public Policy, University of Southern California), and Skye Niles (University of Colorado).

My recent research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, and the University of Colorado.

I also co-founded and have helped direct CU Boulder’s Graduate Certificate in Environmental Justice. 

Recent Courses Taught

  • Spring 2024  GEOG 3782 Environmentalism, Race, and Justice
  • Fall 2023  GEOG 4772  The Geography of Food and Agriculture
  • Spring 2023  GEOG 3782 Environmentalism, Race, and Justice
  • Spring 2023  GEOG/COMM/ENVS/PSCI 7118  Environmental Justice​
  • Fall 2022  GEOG 4772  The Geography of Food and Agriculture

Selected Publications

Updated January 2023