Xi Wang

I am an Assistant Professor in the Institute for Energy Studies (IES) and the Department of Environmental Studies (ENVS) at Western Washington University (WWU). I am interested in questions of energy and climate governance, especially in the context of energy system transitions and efforts at deep decarbonization. I approach these questions at the intersection of energy policy and critical social science. 

I have two current areas of research. The first is a collaborative, mix-methods project with WWU economics faculty that tries to understand U.S. state and municipal policymakers' willingness to consider various types of building energy efficiency policies. 

The second is a project that examines how climate change impacts different groups in the Salish Sea region and how these groups are responding and adapting to climate change. One strand of this project is working with WWU planning faculty and the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community planning department to understand Tribal members' lived experiences and draw on Indigenous cosmology, epistemology, and praxis to design culturally supportive and climate appropriate housing. A different strand of this project is a recent publication written in collaboration with WWU environmental studies GIS faculty that uses a century of Salish Sea climate station data to model how climate change will impact temperature and precipitation changes in the region through 2100. This type of grounded, region-specific climate modeling will provide critical information to local and regional policymakers, planners, and natural resource managers as they prepare for a changing climate.

I have also been exploring how art, storytelling, and creative projects can serve as powerful forms of interventions to climate change. These forms of knowledge production and world re-imagining can broaden the ways in which we understand our relationship to a changing climate and democratize climate knowledge from the stronghold of expert-led climate science. Art, storytelling, and other creative engagements can relay how various communities and places experience climate change in ways that cannot be disconnected from broader social, economic, and political systems, as well as highlight the mitigation and adaptation solutions communities are working on every day. 

As a critical political economist whose scholarship is partially rooted in understanding the evolution of labor organization and labor rights, I serve as a Union Steward for the faculty union, United Faculty of Western Washington, Washington Education Association (WEA)/American Federation of Teachers-Washington (AFT-WA) Local 2084. I have also served on the Executive Board of the Committee on Rights and Compensation at the CU Boulder, which pushed for the unionization of CU workers and is now a wall-to-wall union, United Campus Workers - Communication Workers of America (CWA) Local 7799. In Boulder, I was on the Executive Board of Boulder Cooperative Food, a worker-owned and -operated bulk food cooperative.

I am currently part of a community members-composed Equity Advisory Group to Puget Sound Energy (PSE), the electricity and gas utility serving large parts of western Washington state, helping advise PSE on equity issues in its clean energy transition. I have also worked in community organizing for food, environmental, and social justice in Washington D.C., for the consulting firm Booz Allen, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Note for Prospective Graduate Students:

If you are interested in having me serve as your adviser, please send me an email that responds to the following:

• (a) Your academic and work experiences and how this has informed your interest in issues of climate, energy, infrastructures, industrial labor, and/or housing affordability
• (b) A short paragraph proposing a research question you'd like to investigate and some context on why it may be an interesting question
• (c) Based on my research projects, methods, or publication, why you think I am a good fit for your research interests
  • If you need access to any of my publications, please email me!