Co-founder & Graduate Student
kieren.rudge@berkeley.edu
Kieren is a PhD candidate in Society & Environment in the Environmental Science, Policy, & Management Department at University of California, Berkeley. Their research interests lie at the intersections of environmental justice, climate change adaptation, and military colonialism. Kieren primarily investigates these processes in the contrasting contexts of Guåhan and California to understand how different racialized histories inform adaptation and settler militarism.
They approach this work through the lenses of critical race theory, political ecology, and decolonization studies. Their work is guided by their positionality as a Singaporean American and a first-generation college graduate, which informs their interest in islands and U.S. military imperialism.
Before coming to UC Berkeley, Kieren researched climate policy, planning, and discourse across various geographies within the continental United States, as well as in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Kieren has also work on a myriad of climate justice issues as an organizer and researcher for community-based organizations and policy think tanks in Washington D.C., Maryland, New York, and Connecticut. Kieren has a Master of Environmental Science from Yale University and a Bachelor of Science from Johns Hopkins University.