Thea Riofrancos of the Department of Political Science at Providence College is the final speaker in the 2026 Climate Justice Lecture Series presented by the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology and its Climate & Urban Sustainability Program and Alec Glasser Center for the Power of Music & Social Change.
The associate professor, who is also a strategic co-director of the Climate and Community Institute, focuses her research on resource extraction, climate change, the energy transition, the global lithium sector, green technologies, social movements, and the Latin American left.
These themes are explored in her book, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020), peer-reviewed articles in Perspectives on Politics, Cultural Studies, World Politics, and Global Environmental Politics, essays that have appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, Financial Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, n+1, Dissent, Jacobin and NACLA, and in her co-authored book, A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019).
The professor's latest book is Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (W.W. Norton, September 2025).
Her Climate Justice Lecture Series talk is moderated by UC Irvine Assistant Professor Mukul Kumar of the Department of Urban Planning & Public Policy.
