Teaching & Advising
Teaching and mentoring are a central part of my practice as a scholar, and I have enjoyed working with undergraduate students both inside and outside of the classroom. I currently teach undergraduate classes and graduate seminars on global environmental politics, urban environmental issues, and human-environment relations, with a particular focus on the social, cultural and political dimensions of environmental processes and climate change. I have taught classes across a range of topics including urban geography, economic geography, cultural geography, and political ecology, and have advised students from the fields of economics, engineering, geography, and international studies.
My teaching philosophy is orientated around collaboration and inclusion, critical thinking, and an appreciation for diversity. I am committed to working to make the university a more inclusive space through antiracist pedagogy. I am a certified Mental Health First Aider. My courses are designed to foster both student wellness and academic success.
In recognition of my commitment to my students, I was awarded the 2017 UCLA Department of Geography Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award and the 2020 The William W. Talley, II Faculty Award by the Department of International and Area Studies, University of Oklahoma.
Giving a lecture to students in the Department of Urban Planning and Real Estate (Perencanaan Kota dan Real Estat) at Universitas Tarumanagara Jakarta, 2017.
With then-OU students Alejandra Acuña Balbuena (EducationUSA) Brooke Foster (Ministerio de Educación, España) and Maya Henderson (University of Georgia) at the 2020 Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference.
Current teaching
5SSG2044 Development Geography (Term 1)
4SSG1016 Geography in Action (Term 2)
7SSGN149 Resilience, Adaptation and Development (Term 2)
Course catalogue
Undergraduate
Global Environment: Space, Power & Nature, taught at the University of Oklahoma
This course examines the relationship between space, power, and the environment. In a rapidly changing global environment, new imaginaries and discourses have emerged for thinking about the “global” scale of environmental change. However, global environmental processes are not universal. Rather, they are highly uneven, affecting people and places in different ways. With this in mind, this course explores the spatialities and multi-scalar dimensions of environmental policy, governance and politics, with an explicit focus on dimensions of social and environmental justice.
Global Im/mobilities, taught at the University of Oklahoma
The circulation of people, capital, and ideas is a defining characteristic of globalization. But globalization has not eradicated friction: not all people, forms of capital or ideas move in the same way; some are fast-tracked, others are immobilized, their movements blocked or impaired. This course examines the relationship between mobilities, movement and flux, and immobilities, moorings, and fixity. We ask: Who or what is made (im)mobile, how, and why? Who benefits or suffers from different (im)mobilities? What kinds of mobilities are celebrated and promoted? What kinds are blocked or impaired? To what end? Who benefits or suffers from the mobility or immobility of whom? We explore these questions from a mobility justice perspective.
Topics include: climate migration; disasters, evacuation and logistics; pandemic im/mobilities; human trafficking and slavery; incarceration and detention; humanitarianism and biopolitics; transnational care work and the ‘chain of love’; border crossings; and global logistics and supply chain security.
Land and Environment in Asia, taught at the University of Oklahoma
“Although [land] is often treated as a thing and sometimes as a commodity, it is not like a mat: you cannot roll it up and take it away” – Tania Li
With a particular focus on South and Southeast Asia, this course explores the politics of land. The course is divided into three parts. In the first part, we examine how land has come to be regarded as a commodity, and with what effects. We will examine historical practices of enclosure and accumulation by dispossession under colonial regimes, as well as the recent global land rush and associated processes of land grabbing. The second part of the class examines a series of conflicts over land ownership and land use in rural and urban areas. The third part of the class examines forms of land ownership and use that exceed capitalism and offer alternatives to private property regimes and privatization.
Students develop their research and technical skills through an independent research project, which they create using ArcGIS Story Maps. You can see examples of student projects here, here, and here.
One of my students, Julia Weatherford, was awarded 2021-22 OU Libraries Undergraduate Research Award for her project "Seoul: A Dilemma of Modernity or Affordability."
Environmental Justice and Global Cities, taught at the University of Oklahoma
This class investigates the historical production of environmental injustice in particular geographical contexts. We interrogate how structural forces (capitalism, patriarchy, racism, white privilege) contribute to producing environmental injustice, and how axes of socio-spatial difference shapes experiences of the environment. We will examine the city as a site and object of environmental activism, and critically analyze grassroots organizing and forms of resistance. Resisting dystopian representations of ‘Southern’ mega-cities, this class maintains a particular focus on cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Students collectively create their own digital content - video abstracts, research essays, infographics, and educational videos. Two students were awarded the Glenda Laws Undergraduate Paper Award from the Urban Geography Specialty Group Award of the American Association of Geographers for their final papers.