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Our People

Joshua Muldavin, Ph.D.

Joshua Muldavin, Sarah Lawrence College.  B.S. (Conservation and Natural Resources), M.A., Ph.D. (Geography), University of California, Berkeley. 

Joshua Muldavin, Professor of Geography and Asian Studies, Sarah Lawrence College, was named a Social Science Research Council/Japan Foundation Abe Fellow for 2006-08 to continue his work analyzing Japanese environmental aid to China, and was awarded three National Science Foundation grants for 2006-10 to conduct joint research with Piers Blaikie in the Himalayas on comparative international environmental policy between China, India, and Nepal. Former holder of a Luce-funded professorship in Asian Studies and Human Geography at Sarah Lawrence College, and former Chair and Director of International Development Studies at UCLA where he taught and carried out research for a decade, he has conducted research in China for over 27 years, and is currently writing a book on the social and environmental impacts of China’s reforms and global integration. In addition to being a Visiting Scholar in the Institute of Comparative Culture at Sophia University, he is currently a Visiting Scientist at the International Center for Mountain Research and Development in Katmandu, Nepal, and Associate Faculty member in the College of Humanities and Development at China Agricultural University in Beijing.

Muldavin’s current research investigates links between conservation, sustainability and poverty alleviation in the Himalayan Region. His main research themes include environmental consequences of socialist transition, globalization, the political ecology of international development, development aid regimes, global governance and accountability, food and agriculture, resource and development conflicts, research methodology and policy analysis. His primary country focus is China, and regional focus is Asia broadly defined. His future research examines links between East Asian dynamism and environmental and social change in Latin America, Africa, and Asia as a result of China and Japan’s development aid and subsequent capital investment in these regions.

In addition to China, Professor Muldavin has completed more than 20 years field research in Japan, Nepal, India, Russia, Hungary, northern Europe, Cuba, and Mexico. He has previously received grants and fellowships from the Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Fulbright, UCLA, East-West Center, and Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Muldavin has been an invited lecturer at Oxford, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Columbia, UC Berkeley, Sophia University, University of Havana, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Russian Duma, the European Parliament, and Finnish Parliament, among other noted institutions. In addition he gives frequent interviews for media, and leads intensive seminars on contemporary issues in China for a wide range of interested groups. Other activities include organizing film and lecture series on contemporary issues, and a curriculum on a new DVD release of “The Future of Food”,” a documentary film by Deborah Koons Garcia on GMOs and agriculture.

He is the author of numerous scholarly publications including, most recently, “The Politics of Transition: Critical Political Ecology, Classical Economics, and Ecological Modernization Theory in China,” in The Political Geography Handbook,  “The Paradoxes of Environmental Policy and Resource Management in Reform Era China,” in Economic Geography, “The Geography of Japanese Development Aid to China, 1978-1998,” in Environment and Planning A, and "Upstream downstream, China, India:  The Politics of Environment in the Himalayan Region," a joint article with Piers Blaikie in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Additional articles include: “Global climate change: is China really the problem?,” “Aiding Regional Instability?: The Paradox of Japanese Development Assistance to China,” “The Limits of Market Triumphalism in Rural China,” and “Assessing Environmental Degradation in Contemporary China’s Hybrid Economy:  State Policy Reform and Agrarian Dynamics in Heilongjiang Province,” among others. 

Selected recent and past articles in media sources include: “China’s not alone in environmental crisis” (Op-Ed), Boston Globe, “The West’s part in producing China’s deadly pollution” (Op-Ed), South China Morning Post, December 20, 2007, December 19, 2007, “In rural China, a time bomb is ticking” (Op-Ed), International Herald Tribune, January 1, 2006;  “Beyond the Harbin chemical spill” (Op-Ed), International Herald Tribune, December 1, 2005; “Blaming the Symptoms, Not the Disease: Population Action International on Violent Conflict,” by Joshua Muldavin and Joseph Nevins, Counterpunch.org, January 17/18, 2004; “China's health care works best for the wealthy, SARS outbreak shows” (Op-Ed), Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 18, 2003; “China’s poor left behind:  SARS in the hinterland” (Op-Ed), International Herald Tribune, May 8, 2003; “The World Should Help to Avert Turmoil in China” (Op-Ed), International Herald Tribune, June 3, 1999; “Market Reforms Breed Discontent” (Op-Ed), Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1999.