Levi Van Sant

Associate Professor

Environmental Politics; Food and Agriculture; Sustainability; Land and Property

I study the politics of nature, particularly issues surrounding agriculture, conservation, planning, and land use in the US South. My training is in qualitative methods and I have also developed several mixed methods collaborations recently.

My current project focuses on the politics of rural gentrification and data center development in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

At GMU I regularly teach an introductory survey course on sustainability and an upper-level course on environmental justice.

Selected Publications

Van Sant, L. and Fairbairn, M. (2025) Towards a Right to the Rural? Dialogues in Human Geography.

Van Sant, L. (2024) Trustees of (Public) Reservations? US Land Trusts and Neoliberalism as Bricolage. Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

Van Sant, L., Kay, K., and Shelton, T. (2023) Connecting Country and City: The Multiple Geographies of Real Property Ownership in the US. Geography Compass.

Education

Ph.D., Geography and Integrative Conservation

University of Georgia (2016)