James Van Alstine

James Van Alstine is lecturer in environmental policy and Deputy Director of the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds in the UK. His research focuses on the governance of natural resources in the global North and South, with a particular focus on the politics of low carbon transitions and the extraction of energy and non-energy minerals. He received his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where he studied the evolution of corporate environmentalism in the South African petrochemical sector. Originally from Maine, James spent a decade teaching outdoor education at Outward Bound in the US, and worked for a dot-com start-up in San Francisco. In his spare time, he can be found telemarking in the Alps, rock climbing and hill walking in Britain, or sailing his 30-foot sloop around Europe.