Research
I study how climate risk is reorganizing social protection—and how adaptation governance can either reproduce growth-dependent political economies or open space for ecosocial alternatives. My work bridges social welfare, critical theory, and climate policy using mixed methods to map institutions, outcomes, and ideas across the Global North and South.
Dissertation: When Helping Hurts
My dissertation develops the concept of ecowelfare—the integration of climate adaptation within welfare-state institutions. I argue that crisis governance often cycles repair back into markets through growth-as-adaptation: temporary decommodification of labor and land during disasters, followed by recommodification in recovery. Empirically, I trace how this dynamic operates across U.S. disaster programs and in the global architecture of adaptation planning.
Research Streams
1. Ecowelfare States & Climate Adaptation
Guiding question: How do states integrate climate adaptation with social protection?
I build comparative frameworks for identifying ecowelfare institutions and their distributional logics, including cross-national typologies and analyses of how welfare capacity shapes climate governance.
Key projects:
- Global ecowelfare typology (cross-national indicators of eco(de/re)commodification)
- Comparative analysis of National Adaptation Plans (NAP corpus)
- Climate risk and welfare-state transformation
Methods/data: Model-based clustering; comparative political economy; indicator construction; text-as-data
2. Disasters, Recovery, and the Political Economy of Growth
Guiding question: What does the welfare state do to growth imperatives after disasters?
Using U.S. disasters as a strategic case, I examine how relief and recovery policies shape economic trajectories—and how decommodification during crisis is often reversed during rebuilding.
Key projects:
- Welfare and recovery trajectories after major hurricanes (causal inference)
- Growth-as-adaptation in disaster recovery
- Disaster capitalism and social policy
Methods/data: DiD; generalized synthetic control; panel econometrics; administrative data
3. Adaptation Governance, Ideas, and Policy Discourse
Guiding question: What ideologies organize adaptation policy “common sense”?
I analyze how states narrate adaptation—what gets centered (resilience, markets, infrastructure) and what gets displaced (care, redistribution, enforceable protection)—and how those frames shape policy design.
Key projects:
- Symptomatic reading of the NAP corpus
- Political economy of adaptation planning
- Mitigation–adaptation sequencing and institutional path dependence
Methods/data: NLP; topic modeling; computational discourse analysis; critical policy analysis
4. Ecosocial Policy, Practice, and Translation
Guiding question: How can adaptation meet needs without defaulting to growth-as-repair?
Through applied and collaborative work, I translate ecosocial concepts into practical frameworks for just adaptation, emphasizing redistribution, care, and institutional design.
Key projects:
- Center for Ecosocial Policy (tools, briefs, convenings)
- Community climate education/organizing collaborations
- Ecosocial implementation frameworks for agencies and NGOs
Approach/methods: Participatory action research; policy co-design; practitioner-facing synthesis
5. Critical Theory of Ecowelfare and the Adaptation State
Guiding question: What kind of state is being built through adaptation—and what contradictions does it manage?
I develop a critical theory of the eco-welfare state and adaptation governance, drawing on critical state theory, eco-Marxism, and social reproduction to explain how legitimacy, accumulation, and care are reorganized under climate risk.
Key projects/concepts:
- Ecowelfare; ecosocial safety net
- Eco(de/re)commodification and the welfare/ecology nexus
- Adaptation imaginary; growth-centered resilience
- Technocare and the apparatus of climate governance
Primary traditions: Critical political economy; Frankfurt School/state theory; social reproduction; post-/degrowth; environmental justice
Collaboration
I welcome collaborations on ecowelfare institutions, adaptation governance, disaster recovery political economy, and post-growth ecosocial policy design.
Contact: ct.brown@berkeley.edu