Levi Van Sant

Levi Van Sant

Levi Van Sant

Assistant Professor

Environmental Justice; Food and Agriculture; Sustainability; Conservation Science and Policy; Critical Theory

I am a human geographer whose work focuses on environmental (in)justice, particularly issues surrounding food, agriculture, and land use. My research in the coastal US South analyzes the ways that the racial and class dynamics of the plantation past are reproduced in the present, and argues that any meaningful abolition of this legacy will require fundamentally reshaping property relations.

My current research examines the environmental justice implications of conservation easements, an increasingly common form of publicly-subsidized private land conservation. 

I am also developing a long-term participatory research project on landownership in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Portions of this work have been funded by, among others, the National Science Foundation, the American Association of Geographers, and the Harvard Center for the Study of Capitalism. I have published this research in the journals Antipode, Dissent, GeoforumGeography Compass, and Progress in Human Geography.

Education

Ph.D., Geography and Integrative Conservation

University of Georgia (2016)