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I am an urban sociologist and Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

My research explores the relationship between ideas about nature and urbanization from historical, theoretical, and ethnographic perspectives. I am interested in how ideas about nature are formed, the social conflicts they produce, and how they are deployed to influence the built environment.

I am currently completing a book manuscript that traces a century of urban greening in Germany’s Ruhr region, and am also at work on two additional projects: one on infrastructure and sociology, and the other on the rise and politics of urban sustainability planning.

I received my PhD in Sociology from New York University and hold a BA from Vassar College. Before returning to graduate school, I worked for five years with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, primarily on issues of participatory design, immigration, and public space use. 

NEWS

My 2017 article, "From the City Lens toward Urbanisation as a Way of Seeing: Country/Cities Binaries on an Urbanising Planet," has won the Jane Addams Award for Best Article in Community and Urban Sociology from the Community and Urban Sociology section of the ASA. 

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

2019. (with Boris Vormann). “Long Waves of Urban Reform: Putting the Smart City in its Place.” City. DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2018.1549850.

2018. (with David Wachsmuth). "Green and Gray: New Ideologies of Nature in Urban Sustainability Policy." Annals of the American Association of Geographers. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1417819.


Hillary Angelo - UC Santa Cruz