C. Taylor Brown
I’m a PhD candidate in Social Welfare and Critical Theory at UC Berkeley and the founding Executive Director of the Center for Ecosocial Policy, a nonprofit advancing just climate adaptation through community education, organizing, and policy implementation.
Research
My research focuses on ecosocial policy and the ecowelfare state: how climate risk reshapes welfare institutions, and how adaptation can either entrench or unsettle growth. I blend econometrics and computational methods with comparative political economy and critical theory to understand how social protection systems function as climate adaptation.
My dissertation, When Helping Hurts: Growth, Adaptation, and a Critique of Ecowelfare, examines how modern welfare systems operate as climate adaptation infrastructure—what I call ecowelfare—and develops a framework for ecosocial adaptation that meets human needs without defaulting to growth-as-repair.
Background
I’m a social worker by training and have served in micro- and macro-practice roles across social and environmental policy in the public and private sectors. My work connects grassroots practice with critical policy analysis, bridging community organizing and academic research.
Current Projects
- Divided Ecowelfare State: Maps how corporate disaster philanthropy and federal relief form a bifurcated, highly centralized “public–private” ecowelfare system across major U.S. disasters
- Adapting the Safety Net: Tests how U.S. disasters reshape enrollment in TANF/SNAP/UI/LIHEAP/Medicaid—and whether climate-adapted and ecowelfare programs absorb or amplify those shocks
- Ecosocial Work as Adaptation: An embedded case study showing how ecosocial social work practices (trust, reciprocity, rule-making) can convert extractive livelihoods into durable community stewardship
- Climate & Inequality: Argues that inequality erodes “distributional capacity,” helping explain why some states decarbonize without resilience (or vice versa) rather than building integrated climate policy
- Fueling Ecowelfare: Builds a global typology of energy and utility assistance as “regressive offsetting,” showing how program designs shape energy poverty, cliff effects, and just-transition feasibility
- Mitigation vs. Adaptation Sequencing: Uses event-history models to test whether mitigation ambition delays national adaptation planning—finding complementarity rather than crowd-out, especially in the Global South
- Do Welfare States Adapt?: Uses text-as-data to trace whether national adaptation plans route hazards through welfare instruments versus infrastructure, insurance, or individual responsibility across Europe and the U.S.
- Technocare: Develops a critical theory of care as a socio-technical-ecological medium—arguing that late capitalism captures “care” as an apparatus of ecoregulation that sustains system reproduction
- Center for Ecosocial Policy: Building a pipeline from community climate education to policy implementation
When I’m not writing or teaching, I’m with my spouse, friends, and our Labrador, Indigo. I grew up near Paragould, Arkansas, and I love rock climbing, pottery, painting, poetry, travel, and exploring new wines and teas.
Let’s connect. I’m always interested in collaboration, speaking opportunities, and conversations about ecosocial policy and climate justice.