Joshua Kirshner

Joshua Kirshner joined the Department of Environment and Geography in 2015 as Lecturer in Human Geography and is now a Senior Lecturer, having previously held appointments at Durham University and Rhodes University in South Africa. His research and teaching interests focus on poverty and inequality concerns, exploring the interface between regional development, urban and regional planning, and the economic and political geographies of low-carbon transition. He also works on energy geographies, extractive industries, resource peripheries, environmental and climate planning, migration, displacement and demographic change. Josh has carried out fieldwork in Africa and Latin America, including in Mozambique, South Africa, Brazil and Bolivia. Currently, he co-leads (with Matthew Cotton, Teesside) a two-year project on electricity grid access histories and futures in Mozambique, examining governance of energy provision in urban and peri-urban areas, supported by UK Aid/DFID. He is also Co-investigator in ‘Community Energy and the Sustainable Energy Transition in Ethiopia, Malawi and Mozambique (CESET),’ a UKRI-GCRF-funded project, led by Vanesa Castán Broto (Sheffield). A new project examines connections between energy transitions and disaster recovery in coastal East Africa.

Joshua's work has appeared in major international journals including Nature Energy, Geoforum, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Antipode, Cities, Applied Energy, Energy Research & Social Science, Latin American Perspectives, Bolivian Studies Journal, along with policy briefings, reviews and edited collections. It has been funded by research councils (ESRC, NERC), government agencies (UK Aid/DFID, US Fulbright-Hays program) and foundations (British Academy, Atlantic Philanthropies). He holds a PhD from Cornell University in City and Regional Planning, an MA from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in Urban Planning, and a BA (magna cum laude) from Harvard University in Social Anthropology.