Chaz Briscoe

Chaz Briscoe is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Political Science. He graduated with his Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine in 2022. His research focuses on racial politics, democratic institutions, and Black political movements. He is currently working on turning his dissertation entitled “Exhibiting a Black Ecology of Environmental Degradation: Anti-Blackness Coalescing Around Multiple Sites of Power” into journal articles for publication. Previously, Chaz has published articles on group responses to Black mobilization and discourses of racial progress.

Chaz’s current work also focuses on the intersection of race, power, and discourses of climate justice. As a Climate Justice Fellow for the organization Second Nature, Chaz is researching how higher education institutions can lead in climate justice by utilizing Black and Indigenous thought to create more resilient campus communities. In the future, this research direction will lead to further investigation into how issues of race and environmentalism impact communities in Appalachia and how this issue travels globally within other Black communities.