Tufts University
   Julian Agyeman Ph.D. FRSA
         Associate Professor and Chair, Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning

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  Background

Julian Agyeman

How does an academic with trans- or even post- disciplinary interests describe who, or what he or she is!? I finished my first degree as an ecologist/biogeographer, but my interests, passions, higher degrees and career opportunities have gradually turned me toward environmental and sustainability policy and planning such that I'm now what might be called 'an environmental social scientist', although I'm told my work increasingly fits into the emerging field of 'urban political ecology'.

I was born and educated in Britain where I got a B.Sc. (joint honours) in Geography and Botany from Durham University, a Post Graduate Certificate in Education (Geographical Education) from The University of Newcastle upon Tyne, an M.A. in Conservation Policy from Middlesex University, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Education from the University of London. Having a dual science and social science background helps frame my perspectives, research and scholarship.

Before becoming a tenured academic, I taught geography in a high school in Carlisle, England, then environmental policy at London South Bank University and later,in 1998-9 at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, USA. I have worked as an environmental education and policy adviser at Notting Dale Urban Studies Centre in London, and in local government in the inner London Boroughs of Lambeth and Islington. I was co-founder in 1988, and chair until 1994, of the Black Environment Network (BEN), the first environmental justice-based organization of its kind in Britain. I was co-founder in 1996, and am co-editor of Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability and was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA) in the same year. Between 1992 and 1997, I ran my own consulting firm which specialized in communicating environmental and sustainable solutions to local governments, not-for-profit organizations and businesses. In January 1998, my wife Lynn and I left Britain for the USA. We now live in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

My areas of expertise and current research interests are in three broad areas. Each critically explores some aspect(s) of the complex and embedded relations between humans and the environment, whether mediated by institutions or social movement organizations, and the effects of this on public policy and planning processes and outcomes, particularly in relation to notions of justice and equity. The areas are: the nexus between the concepts of environmental justice and sustainability and, specifically, the possibility of a 'just sustainability'; the extent, complexity and pervasiveness of 'rural racism' in Britain, its linkages to wider discourses of belonging, 'becoming', continuity and change in racialised spaces and ultimately to discourses of nationhood; and the potential role of 'education for sustainability' in delivering more just and sustainable futures.

I am a Contributing Editor to Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development , an Associate Editor of Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture and a member of the editorial boards of The Journal of Environmental Education, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, and the Australian Journal of Environmental Education. I am a member of the Global Health Faculty at Tufts University School of Medicine and a 'Distinguished Scholar' at The University of Texas, Austin, Center for Sustainable Development.

My publications, which number over 130, include books, peer reviewed articles, book chapters, published conference presentations, published reports, book reviews, newspaper articles, Op-Eds and articles in professional magazines and journals.

Julian Agyeman Ph.D. FRSA
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning
Tufts University
97 Talbot Ave
Medford, MA 02155
USA

Tel: (+1) 617-627-3394
Fax: (+1) 617-627-3377
Email: julian.agyeman(at)tufts.edu

My email address is not linked in order to stop spam. To send me an email, simply replace (at) with @.

Last updated July 2008

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