Title

Associate Professor

Department of Sociology and Gerontology

Lead Departmental Advisor for Sociology, Criminology, and Social Justice

Education 

PhD Sociology - Michigan State University

MA Sociology - University of Wyoming

BA Secondary Education/Social Studies - University of Wyoming

Ryan Gunderson's current research projects concern the potential effectiveness and political-economic dimensions of proposed solutions to environmental problems, climate change inaction, the social and environmental impacts of technology, reification/ideology, and the renewal of classical and mid-twentieth century sociological theory.

Receiving the 2019 Early Career Award from the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences and the 2020 Miami University Junior Faculty Scholar Award, Ryan has published around 50 articles featured in Agriculture and Human Values, Environmental Politics, Journal of Cleaner Production, Organization & Environment, and other journals, and the following books: Hothouse Utopia (Zero Books, 2021), Making the Familiar Strange (Routledge, 2020), The Degrowth Alternative (Routledge, 2020, with Diana Stuart and Brian Petersen), and Climate change Solutions (University of Michigan Press, 2020, with Diana Stuart and Brian Petersen). 

Courses taught by Ryan include Environment, Society & Justice; Introduction to Social Justice Studies; Research Methods; and Sociological Theory. 

Recent Publications

Gunderson, Ryan. 2021. Hothouse Utopia: Dialectics Facing Unsavable Futures. Washington, DC: Zero Books.

Gunderson, Ryan. 2020. Making the Familiar Strange: Sociology Contra Reification. New York: Routledge. 

Stuart, Diana, Ryan Gunderson, and Brian Petersen. 2019. "The Political Economy of Geoengineering as Plan B: Technological Rationality, Moral Hazard, and New Technology." New Political Economy 24(5): 696-715.

Gunderson, Ryan. 2017. "Ideology Critique for the Environmental Social Sciences: What Reproduces the Treadmill of Production?" Nature and Culture 12(3): 263-289.

Vita