Nik Heynen

My research has explored areas of urban political ecology, abolition ecologies and geographies, and geographies of neoliberalism and racial capitalism. I’ve tried to theorize and demonstrate empirically how racialized processes of capitalism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism produce structurally unjust geographies and ecologies. I discovered geography after having double majored in philosophy and religious studies for a couple years as an undergraduate student. I did so, I now know, because I saw geography as providing the clearest opportunity to work toward a social justice-oriented research agenda that takes rigorous, theoretically sophisticated scholarship seriously, but could also focus on practical, justice-centered work. 

Trained as an urban geographer, I have published research based in Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Atlanta and New Orleans. I am thinking about cities in the U.S. South now and have several streams of research in the southern cities.   

For nearly a decade I have been working with the Saltwater Geechee community on Sapelo Island on the restoration of traditional agricultural practices and flood mitigation made necessary as a result of descendants losing their land to development pressure and increasing sea-level rise. Through this work I co-direct UGA’s Cornelia Walker Baily Program on Land, Sea, and Agriculture with Maurice Bailey.

Early in my career I was fortunate to serve as part of the editorial collective at Antipode, which was one of the key inspirations that made me want to become a geographer and was the founding Chair of Antipode’s Institute for the Geographies of Justice (IGJ). I have also served as an editor for Annals of the Association of American Geographers and I helped establish the University of Georgia Press book series Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation, as well as was a founding editor of the journal Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.

I have been very lucky to have had opportunities to learn with and from brilliant graduate and undergraduate students who have been a constant source of inspiration and motivation. In addition to my teaching at UGA I am a visiting scholar at Spelman College in Atlanta. I look forward to continuing this work with students, so please reach out to me if you are an undergraduate or graduate student interested in talking about working together.

Please see my CV linked above for more information about my specific research, teaching and service interests.