Environmental and Urban Studies

The University of Chicago offers a full-time position in Environmental and Urban Studies, focusing on the interconnectedness of urbanization, climate change, and social justice. The program emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches, combining social sciences, humanities, and environmental studies to address pressing urban and environmental challenges. Students will develop a theoretical and practical understanding of sustainable development and socio-environmental dynamics.
Urban and environmental issues are interconnected. Urbanization, climate change, biodiversity and habitat loss, pollution, food and energy needs, and issues of social justice and economic stability are among the most pressing issues facing contemporary societies. Environmental and urban processes operate at multiple scales, involving natural and human consequences that cannot be addressed solely within a single discipline. Students will gain an understanding of the interconnected natural and urban realms, building their understanding of what sustainable development means and how opportunities and challenges can be met. The major motivates a deeper theoretical understanding of urbanism and nature, as well as practical strength in addressing urban and environmental challenges. It brings a spatial and place-based perspective to the study of these challenges, using built form and environmental context as key, conceptual lenses to investigate the social, cultural, economic, and humanistic dimensions of urbanization and environment.

The major and minor program in Environmental and Urban Studies encourages interdisciplinary approaches to the study of environment, geography, and urbanization grounded in theoretical frameworks and research methods from the social sciences and humanities, complemented by approaches from environmental sciences, urban planning and design, and urban science. The major fosters the interrogation of the limits and possibilities of inherited approaches to the study of society and environment across space and time, and explores new epistemologies, conceptual frameworks, and research methods for the analysis of socio-environmental dynamics, especially in relation to the cascade of environmental emergencies that are reshaping the conditions for social existence across the planet.