I'm an Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at Singapore Management University. My research uses the tools of ethnography and the lens of political ecology to explore processes of urban environmental change. Contemporary climate adaptation and mitigation efforts, particularly those that aim to reroute the movement of water and energy to and through cities, are in the process of reworking urban metabolisms and social relations across the globe. I study how attempts to make critical infrastructural systems more “climate resilient” transform material flows and urban lives, rearranging labor and power across the extended metropolitan landscape in the process. My multi-scalar research highlights both the intimate and systemic effects of these initiatives, with an emphasis on their environmental justice impacts. My past work was grounded in the arid U.S. West, and I’m currently developing new projects in Singapore and Nepal.
My first book, Replumbing the City: Water Management as Climate Adaptation in Los Angeles, will be published by University of California Press in spring 2025. You can find my peer-reviewed articles in American Anthropologist, Antipode, City & Society, Critique of Anthropology, Environment and Planning E, Environment and Society, Geography Compass, GeoHumanities, Journal of Political Ecology, and WIREs Water. I’ve also written for a range of public-facing outlets, including the Los Angeles Review of Books, Zocalo Public Square, and The Awl (RIP).
Before joining SMU, I worked as a research scientist with the Urban Water Innovation and Sustainability Hub at Texas A&M AgriLife’s Dallas Center. I also held postdoctoral fellowships at UC Berkeley and the University of Southern California. I received my PhD from Yale's combined degree program in Environmental Studies and Anthropology.
You can reach me at sprandle at gmail dot com.