People

Hillary Angelo, co-founder and inaugural director
Hillary Angelo is an Associate Professor of Sociology at UCSC and was a Member of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton during the 2022-2023 year. Her work investigates understandings of the environment in relationship to large-scale spatial and social transformations, through historical and contemporary research on urban greening, sustainability planning and policy, infrastructure, and climate change. Her first book, How Green Became Good: Urbanized Nature and the Making of Cities and Citizens, was published in 2021 by the University of Chicago Press, and she is currently working on a book about the United States’ 610 million acres of public lands, which are key sites for climate adaptation and flashpoints of polarized political conflict. Read more about Hillary and her work here.

Miriam Greenberg, co-founder and assistant director 
Miriam Greenberg is Professor of Sociology at UCSC. Her work lies at the intersection of cultural, environmental, and critical urban studies, with particular focus on the temporality and politics of crisis. Her books include Branding New York:  How a City in Crisis was Sold to the World (Routledge, 2008); Crisis Cities: Disaster and Redevelopment in New York and New Orleans (Oxford, 2014); and The City is the Factory: New Solidarities and Spatial Tactics in an Urban Age (Cornell 2017).  In recent years she has undertaken a series of collaborative research and writing projects exploring urban and environmental justice issues in California. These  include: Critical Sustainabilities, on competing discourses of sustainable urbanism in California; No Place Like Home, on the experience of the affordable housing crisis in Santa Cruz County; and between 2023-2025, WUI Research for Resilience, which traces relationships between California’s urban housing crisis, the growth of its “wildlands urban interface,” and concomitant impacts on climate, conservation and indigenous land stewardship (supported by UC Office of the President Climate Action Research Initiative.) Read more about Miriam and her work here.

Colleen Stone is the department assistant for Sociology, supporting faculty and staff driven research. Additionally, Colleen manages all public relations and administrative aspects of the Science & Justice Research Center, its projects and grants, curriculum, training and visitor programs and helps coordinate CUES research and its Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Research for Resilience project. Colleen is also a volunteer disaster worker with the Boulder Creek Community Emergency Response Team.

Kyle Galindez, graduate student research assistant 
Kyle Galindez is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at UCSC. His dissertation research examines urbanization, nature, and imperialism on the island of Guåhan. The project draws on urban political ecology, theories of imperialism, indigenous studies, and Oceania studies to highlight the enduring significance of imperialism for critical urban studies and frameworks of socionatural transformation. His recent work includes Planetary Urbanization and Imperialism: A View from Guåhan/Guam, published in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.