Naomi Klein is Co-Director of the Centre for Climate Justice, and Associate Professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia.

Her research and teaching take place at the intersection of crisis and political transformation. She looks at the ways that large-scale shocks – from economic crises to ecological disasters to terror attacks – act as catalysts and accelerators for broad-based social change.  This is an area of research she explored in her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, and she uses this lens to explore the aftermath of disasters linked to climate breakdown, including Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico (2017) and the Camp Fire in Northern California in (2018).

At UBC, her primary focus is on how the climate emergency can and must act as a catalyst for  bold, justice-based transformation in our bio-region and beyond, with particular attention to the intersections between climate justice and Indigenous land rights; the gendered and racialized labour of care; and the rights of migrants.

Prior to joining UBC, she was the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University, from 2018 – 2021, and she co-founded The Leap.