Dr. Joyce Klein-Rosenthal wins Ford Foundation Fellowship to work on Climate Adaptation and Social Justice

By
CSUD
May 25, 2017

We are pleased to announce that Joyce Klein-Rosenthal, an Adjunct Associate Research Scholar with the Earth Institute’s Center for Sustainable Urban Development (CSUD), was selected as an awardee in the Ford Foundation 2017 Postdoctoral Fellowship Competition sponsored by the Ford Foundation and administered by the Fellowships Office of the National Academies of Sciences (NAS), Engineering, and Medicine. The NAS Fellowships Office notes “The Ford Foundation Fellowships at the postdoctoral level are intended to identify and facilitate the academic, intellectual, and professional development of individuals who have demonstrated superior scholarship, are committed to a career in teaching and research at the college or university level, show promise of future achievement as scholars and teachers, and are well prepared to use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students.”

During her Fellowship year, Joyce will undertake research to assess the effects of public and privately-funded climate adaptation and hazards risk reduction programs on housing markets and municipal goals for community development and social equity, in collaboration with research partners at the Center for Sustainable Urban Development (CSUD) and the CUNY Urban Collaboratory, a project of CUNY’s Environmental Science Initiative. Professor Elliott D. Sclar, CSUD’s Director and Ford Foundation mentor, said, “Dr. Klein-Rosenthal’s research and this project fits well with CSUD’s engaged scholarship on the complex interactions between land use, transportation, climate change and public health.”

Dr. Klein-Rosenthal received her Ph.D. in Urban Planning from Columbia University’s Urban Planning Program in 2010. Joyce said, “I am honored to be selected for this prestigious award, and very grateful for the support of the Ford Foundation, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine panelists and their Fellowships Office. She thanks CSUD and CUNY Environmental Sciences Initiative’s Urban Collaboratory for their support.

As the impacts of climate change become more visible through observation and analysis of environmental change, it’s important to increase our understanding of how climate adaptation programs and policies can beneficially address currently high levels of economic inequality and urban health disparities in the United States. This study seeks to develop the knowledge base required to align public programs with the goals of climate and environmental justice.