Bilal Butt

Bilal Butt is an Associate Professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. His core research sits at the intersection of environmental justice and environmental geopolitics. He contextualizes his work against three sub-areas: (1) the environmental politics of life and death; (2) environmental and social change under uncertainty in East African drylands, and (3) environmental and health dynamics in the tropics. He examines how the ever-expanding tentacles of capitalism into new forms of socio-environmental life and the volatility of climate change have resulted in the transformations of political institutions, sociotechnical knowledge, and material environments.

His research asks how these transformations are affecting the lives and environments of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet. EJ’s research attention to Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) has helped to unveil how processes of industrialization, state capture, techno-politics, neoliberalism, and capitalism have led to bodily harm and enhanced vulnerability to climate change. Critical Environmental Geopolitics brings a multi-theoretical toolkit to help understand why these changes are occurring and identify their impacts. Geopolitics also centers on spatiality, place, and power relations as key components for understanding the interactions between both human and non-human actants. By engaging theories, mixed methods, and fieldwork, we can dive deeper into how environmental problems are created and the vicious outcomes affecting indigenous communities.

Dr. Butt received the National Science Foundations Career Award and is a recipient of the Superior Teaching Award from the University of Michigan. He has published in diverse journals such as the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Remote Sensing of Environment, Journal of Applied Ecology, and Humanity. He teaches courses on Conservation, Development and Environmental Justice, Political Ecology and Environmental Violence Conflict, Environmental Governance, and Preparing for International Fieldwork.