Karl is the George J. and Kathleen Waters Matthews Distinguished University Professor of Law at Northeastern University. His research has centered on labor law and constitutional law with a special focus on South Africa. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Pretoria in recognition of his scholarship on transformative constitutionalism, which, according to the University’s citation, “has precipitated in South Africa no less than a paradigm shift in post-apartheid legal thinking.”

Aldon Morris is the Leon Forrest Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University. He is a past President of the American Sociological Association. His books include The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement and The Scholar Denied: W.E.B. DuBois and the Birth of Modern Sociology. In that latter book, Morris challenges the conventional account that credits Robert Park and his colleagues at the University of Chicago for developing modern sociology. He argues instead that the pioneering work had been done years earlier at Atlanta University by DuBois and his collaborators.

Francisco Pérez is an activist, educator and researcher. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah and a Senior Economist at the Center for Economic Democracy. Previously, he served as Director of the Center for Popular Economics, a nonprofit collective of political economists whose programs and publications demystify the economy and put useful economic tools in the hands of people fighting for social and economic justice. He has a PhD in economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, an MPA from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and an AB from Harvard University.

Margaret is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan. Her books include Genealogies of Citizenship and The Power of Market Fundamentalism (with Fred Block). Her work has been broadly influential in cultural sociology, economic sociology, citizenship studies, and social movement research.

Patricia Zavella is Professor Emerita of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her books include The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism. She serves on several nonprofit boards including California Latinas for Reproductive Justice and Community Agroecology Network. Patricia retired from the board for medical reasons.

Brian’s research explores how the impacts of climate-change-driven sea-level rise are compounded and racialized by infrastructure and heritage preservation in the South Carolina Lowcountry.

The Lowcountry is a region shaped by two histories: slavery and the tidal flow of water. With four consecutive years of hurricanes and 89 days of tidal flooding in Charleston in 2019, the Lowcountry’s relationship with the ebb and flow of the tides has become central in a new way, as a harbinger of future destruction. As local governments forge new tidal relations by building and adapting infrastructure, the preservation of antebellum heritage landscapes and everyday flooding of Black communities reveal enduring racial geographies. While officials in city meetings argue that “water knows no boundaries,” residents understand that the infrastructures underpinning the dispersal and management of floodwater enact a racialized politics of emplacement, inclusion, and exclusion.

Brian’s research is situated in this and other spaces where global climate change and water infrastructure become entangled with what Saidiya Hartman calls the afterlife of slavery. His dissertation offers new formulations of coastal resiliency and provides empirical support for local environmental justice organizations in their urgent claims for reparative flood mitigation.

Brian’s research is based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork and collaborative community-led research with Charleston flood activist groups.

He received his B.A. in Anthropology and Philosophy from the Honors College at the University of Georgia, and his M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.