Gabe Schwartzman, PhD

Gabe Schwartzman received his PhD from UMN's Department of Geography, Environment and Society in 2023, and accepted a position as assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Sustainability at the University of Tennessee. You can reach him in his new position at gschwar3@utk.edu  

He is a human geographer studying the political economy and cultural politics of the decline of coal in the Appalachian region. In his dissertation, he uses political ecology, development studies, and Feminist economic geography to investigate the gendered and racialized politics rural economic development and deindustrialization in Appalachia. His dissertation examines how environmental politics and climate forest governance play a central role in debates and contestations around Appalachia's future, as communities contend with the emerging environmental risks with the decline of the coal industry (e.g. bankrupt coal companies defaulting on environmental remediation obligations), and as emergent carbon forest offset and tourism economies open new questions about equity and environmental resource management (who gets to access and benefit from environmental resources). Drawing on previous research on development in the Brazilian Amazon, his dissertation pushes these literatures and the discipline to respond to and contend with contemporary crises of rural politics. He received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in 2019 and a Fulbright Research Fellowship to study rural development politics in the Brazilian Amazon in 2017.

Recent Publications

Schwartzman, G. 2022. Climate rentierism after coal: forests, carbon offsets, and post-coal politics in the Appalachian coalfields. Journal of Peasant Studies. https://doi-org.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/10.1080/03066150.2022.2078710

Schwartzman, G. 2021. POWER and the Future of Appalachia: Discursive Framings of an Economic Transition. Southeastern Geographer. 61(4): 343-356. https://doi.org/10.1353/sgo.2021.0024

Recent Awards

Development Geographies Specialty Group Best Student Paper Award. 2023. American Association of Geographers

Krishna Bharadwaj and Eric Wolf Prize. 2022. Journal of Peasant Studies

Best Paper in 2021. Southeastern Geographer.