In September 2022, Danya Al-Saleh, a feminist geographer with expertise in Environmental Studies and Middle East Studies from the University of California Los Angeles, joined the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington as Assistant Professor of International Studies.
It is the school’s first faculty position dedicated entirely to the field of environmental justice. The purpose is to underscore both the urgency of the climate crisis and how environmental harms are distributed and impact communities in uneven ways both within and across nation-states.
“I am excited to be joining a public university like UW, and to collaborate with such remarkable and dedicated colleagues across the university,” said Al-Saleh. “My work is quite interdisciplinary, so the Jackson School is an ideal intellectual community to develop my research and teaching on the interconnected crises of climate change, U.S. imperialism, and energy transition. Lastly, I am really looking forward to thinking and learning with students in the classroom.”
In autumn, Al-Saleh began teaching courses on climate justice at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She will also contribute to the School’s U.S. in the World program, a series of courses and public events that focuses on U.S. foreign policy impacts. The role will allow the Jackson School to develop connections with the College of the Environment and Geography as well as many other units that focus on the Middle East and environmental issues.
Prior to joining the Jackson School, Al-Saleh was the American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow, Division of Humanities and Department of Geography at University of California, Los Angeles.
She holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from CUNY Graduate Center in New York. She has studied Arabic in Egypt, Jordan and Qatar, and does her research in Arabic and English.