I’m an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of California Santa Cruz and author of Cities on the World Stage: The Politics of Global Urban Climate Governance (Cambridge University Press). I received my PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto in 2016, was a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Ottawa and am affiliated with the Earth System Governance network, and the Munk School of Global Affairs.
My research and teaching focus on voluntary transnational coordination and explore in particular the role of cities in responding to complex issues on the global agenda, especially climate change. I’m particularly interested in the politics and power relations that shape how cities think about, approach, and engage in practices of global governance and how they balance the pressures of competing demands and expectations.
My work has been published in a variety of journals, including Nature Climate Change, Global Environmental Politics, Environmental Politics, WIREs Climate Change, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Environment and Planning C, and the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal (selected as the best article of 2013).
Prior to returning to academia, I co-founded and managed ViewSource Media Inc., a branding and media company based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
David J. Gordon 