Naomi Klein – Department of Geography

My research and teaching take place at the intersection of crisis and political transformation.

I look at the ways that large-scale shocks – from economic crises to ecological disasters to terror attacks – act as catalysts and accelerators for broad-based social change. Very often that change is regressive. Societies are pushed backwards; civil and human rights are eroded; power and wealth are rapidly concentrated among elites; societies turn against the most vulnerable. This is an area of research I explored in my 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, and I have continued to use this lens to explore the aftermath of disasters linked to climate breakdown, including Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico (2017) and the Camp Fire in Northern California in (2018).

The work I am most passionate about, however, involves a kind of inverse shock doctrine: ways that large shocks can be harnessed to usher in progressive change, with democratic and economic rights strengthened and policies protecting the natural world rapidly adopted. This is the subject matter of my 2014 book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate and my 2019 collection On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal. 

At UBC, my primary focus is on how the climate emergency can and must act as a catalyst for this kind of bold, justice-based transformation in our bio-region and beyond, with particular attention to the intersections between climate justice and Indigenous land rights; the gendered and racialized labour of care; and the rights of migrants.

Prior to joining UBC, I was the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University, from 2018 – 2021, and I co-founded The Leap. 

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