CEGU

Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization

Division of Social Sciences, The University of Chicago

portrait of Neil Brenner

Alexander Arroyo

Associate Director & Senior Research Associate in Global Political Ecology, Urban Theory Lab
Affiliated Faculty, Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU)

Alexander Arroyo is a critical geographer and environmental designer. Working across written and spatial media, his research broadly explores relations between the environmental geographies, infrastructural formations, and spatial imaginaries of American empire. His first book, Ecologies of Power (MIT Press, 2016), co-authored with Pierre BĂ©langer, investigated the logistical landscapes of global U.S. militarism beyond the battlefield, and was awarded the John Brinkerhoff Jackson Book Prize for Landscape Studies. His current book project, Designing an Ocean, focuses on the transoceanic design imaginaries and “geographic techniques” (or “geotechnics”) of U.S. imperialism in the Pacific and Arctic, ranging from the mid-19th century into speculative near-futures. Ongoing collaborative projects include investigation into the evidentiary regimes of climate justice and associated rights, and the “political life” of the ice edge as a contested cartographic object. His research has been supported by the Norwegian Research Council, University of Chicago’s Institute on the Formation of Knowledge and International Institute of Research in Paris, the National Science Foundation, Institute on Global Cooperation and Conflict, Peder Sather Center for Advanced Study, and UC Berkeley Bancroft Library, among others. He holds a PhD in Geography from UC Berkeley with a designated emphasis in Science and Technology Studies, and additional degrees in Landscape Architecture (MLA, Harvard Graduate School of Design, with distinction), Philosophy, and Human Rights (BA, with honors, Columbia University, magna cum laude).