The School of Public Policy and Global Affairs (SPPGA) welcomes Sara Nelson as a Simons Postdoctoral Fellow working with Professor M. V. Ramana, Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security. During the term of her appointment, Sara will broadly examine the geography and political economy of the nuclear industry, focusing specifically on efforts to position nuclear energy as a way to deal with climate change, and the political and economic factors influencing energy transitions trajectories.
Sara holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota, and is a Fellow with the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Her research combines historical methods, political economy, and site-based fieldwork to examine multi-scalar political and economic processes, with a focus on the political economy of environmental conservation. Her research has been published in the journals Antipode; Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses; Development and Change; and South Atlantic Quarterly, among others. She is excited to pursue this new empirical direction in her research with Prof. Ramana. She can be reached at sara.nelson@ubc.ca.
Prof. Ramana says “I am excited to be working with Sara. She comes with a broad and interdisciplinary background, with a firm grasp of critical social theory and a record of deep empirical research. While the current work arrangements where everyone is away from the office are not conducive to it, I do hope that SPPGA members will find ways of interacting with Sara and benefitting from her being part of the school.”
