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Ryan Gunderson
Professor,
Lead Departmental Advisor for Sociology, Criminology, and Social Justice
Sociology and Gerontology, Institute for the Environment and Sustainability

Ryan Gunderson

Contact Info

513-529-4113
366 Upham

Education

  • PhD Sociology - Michigan State University
  • MA Sociology - University of Wyoming
  • BA Secondary Education/Social Studies - University of Wyoming

Ryan Gunderson's current research projects concern the potential effectiveness and political-economic dimensions of proposed solutions to environmental problems, climate change inaction, the social and environmental impacts of technology, reification/ideology, and the renewal of classical and mid-twentieth century sociological theory.

Receiving the 2019 Early Career Award from the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences and the 2020 黑料社区 Junior Faculty Scholar Award, Ryan has published over 60 articles featured in Agriculture and Human Values, Environmental Politics, Journal of Cleaner Production, Organization & Environment, and other journals, and the following books: Hothouse Utopia (Zero Books, 2021), Making the Familiar Strange (Routledge, 2020), The Degrowth Alternative (Routledge, 2020, with Diana Stuart and Brian Petersen), and Climate change Solutions (University of Michigan Press, 2020, with Diana Stuart and Brian Petersen).

Courses taught by Ryan include Environment, Society & Justice; Introduction to Social Justice Studies; Research Methods; and Sociological Theory.

Teaching and/or Research Interests

Environmental sociology; sociology of technology; social theory; political economy; animal studies

Selected Publications

  • Gunderson, Ryan. 2023. "Powerless, Stupefied, and Repressed Actors Cannot Challenge Climate Change: Real Helplessness as a Barrier Between Climate Concern and Action." Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 53(2):271-295.
  • Gunderson, Ryan and Claiton Fyock. 2022. "The Political Economy of Climate Change Litigation: Is There a Point to Suing Fossil Fuel Companies?" New Political Economy 27(3):441-454.
  • Gunderson, Ryan. 2021. Hothouse Utopia: Dialectics Facing Unsavable Futures. Washington, DC: Zero Books.
  • Gunderson, Ryan and Sun-Jin Yun. 2021. "Building Energy Democracy to Mend Ecological and Epistemic Rifts: An Environmental Sociological Examination of Seoul's One Less Nuclear Power Plant Initiative." Energy Research & Social Science 72:101884.
  • Gunderson, Ryan. 2020. Making the Familiar Strange: Sociology Contra Reification. New York: Routledge.
  • Gunderson, Ryan, Diana Stuart, and Brian Petersen. 2020. "The Fossil Fuel Industry's Framing of Carbon Capture and Storage: Faith in Innovation, Value Instrumentalization, and Status Quo Maintenance." Journal of Cleaner Production 252:119767.
  • Gunderson, Ryan, Diana Stuart, and Brian Petersen. 2019. "The Political Economy of Geoengineering as Plan B: Technological Rationality, Moral Hazard, and New Technology." New Political Economy 24(5):696-715.