Richard Matthew

I am a Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the University of California at Irvine, Director of the Blum Center for Poverty Alleviation and Vice-President of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association. My research explores challenges at the intersection of nature loss and climate change; poverty and inequality; and disaster, displacement and violent conflict. Over the past twenty-five years, I have done extensive fieldwork in conflict and disaster zones in Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Eswatini, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, Paraguay, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. I served on UN humanitarian and peacebuilding missions in DRC, Rwanda and Sierra Leone.