Robert Gioielli, PhD

Associate Professor of Environmental Humanities and Director of the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Visiting Fellowship 2025/26 (February 1, 2026 – February 20, 2026)

Rob Gioielli’s work focuses on urban environments, particularly issues of environmental justice and inequality, and the intersections between social issues and sustainability. He is also interested in critical histories of environmental politics, organizing and activism, as well methods and approaches to conducting interdisciplinary research, and connecting the environmental humanities to the natural sciences and technical disciplines. He is the author of Environmental Activism and the Urban Crisis: Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, and articles in the Journal of Urban History, Radical History Review, Global Environment and Environmental History, and numerous other venues. He is currently writing a social and environmental history of American suburban sprawl, under contract with University of Washington Press. He is Docent of Environmental Humanities and Urban History, has served in numerous positions with the American Society for Environmental History and the American Society for Environmental History, and currently sits on the editorial board of the journal Environmental History. He has been a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany, and serves as the Vice President of the Society of Fellows, the center’s alumni organization. Prior to coming to KTH, he taught history and environmental studies for twelve years at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College. He was also one of the founding members of the Over-the-Rhine Museum and served as the chair of the museum’s board of directors for five years.

Statement of interest

My motivation for visiting the Institute for Contemporary History is twofold. First, I have a broad interest in the environmental history of social and mass housing, and the importance of safe, affordable, and accessible housing for thriving and sustainable cities in the future. Most of my work on this topic has focused on the United States (and more recently, Sweden), but formerly socialist cities like Ljubljana are an important part of housing’s history, present, and future. Second, I am excited to explore connections and collaborations between the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory and the institute’s environmental history research group, particularly because of its strengths connecting the field to political and social history.

Selected publications

• Environmental Activism and the Urban Crisis: Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, May 2014. Paperback July 2015.
•  “Forum on Fair Housing and Environmental Justice” edited and wrote introduction with Jennifer Thomson, Environmental History, July 2025.
• “The American Single-Family Home: Towards a Social and Environmental History” Global Environment, July 2025.
• “Mobility, Race and Climate in Postwar Atlanta,” for “Our Shared Planet” special issue of American Studies (AMSJ), edited by Timo Muller and Michelle Yates, 2021.
• “The Tyranny of the Map: Rethinking Redlining,” The Metropole: The Official Blog of the Urban History Association, November 2022. https://themetropole.blog/2022/11/03/the-tyranny-of-the-map-rethinking-redlining/