Gregory Simon

Dr. Gregory Simon
Ph.D. • Professor • Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Geography & Environmental Sciences
Gregory.Simon@ucdenver.edu

Mailing Address:
Dept. of Geography & Environmental Sciences
Campus Box 172
P.O. Box 173364
Denver, CO 80217-3364

Physical Location:
Auraria Campus
North Classroom Building
Room 3522

Fields of Interest:

Human-Environment Interactions, Political Ecology, Environmental Policy and Governance, Critical Hazards and Disaster Studies

Biography

Gregory L. Simon, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver, with affiliate faculty appointments at CU Boulder and in CU Denver’s Urban and Regional Planning program. His teaching and research are informed by the fields of political ecology, environmental policy and governance, and critical hazards and disaster studies. He holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Washington and a Master of Environmental Science and Management from UC Santa Barbara. Prior to CU Denver, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow and Principal Investigator at Stanford University in the Center for the American West and the Spatial History Project. He has since held Visiting Scholar positions at Stanford, UCLA, ETH Zurich, and the University of Bern. He has held advisory positions at the United Nations Foundation and the US Environmental Protection Agency. He is Co-Director of CU Denver’s Community Collaborative Research Center.

Professor Simon is fundamentally interested in the relationship between environmental change, societal risks, and environmental knowledge production. His research uses a political ecology lens to detail how policy objectives to address persistent and emerging risks are defined rhetorically, substantiated scientifically, and negotiated politically. His work exposes tensions that produce undesirable social and ecological outcomes, while offering perspectives and policy pathways supporting greater social justice and ecological vitality. Over the years, he has brought his research interests to diverse topics, including hazards management, urbanization, forest cover change, outdoor recreation policy, agricultural land conservation, food platforms, post-truth politics, and pandemic responses, among others. 

His most recent work expands the field of critical hazards and disaster studies by using spatial-historical research to reveal the co-production of environmental risks and their governance. His research is particularly concerned with understanding the formulation, objectives and implications of anticipatory risk management strategies and associated discursive representations of hazards. He also examines ‘hazard creep’, which involves investigations into the knowledges and embodied practices of living in a state of perpetual risks and potential disasters.

In his classes, Professor Simon details how and why economic, political, and cultural forces come to produce current environmental outcomes and mediate the way we respond to them. Across all student teaching engagements Dr. Simon strives to increase student awareness of environmental subjects with the use of: (a) interdisciplinary perspectives, that emphasize the depth, breadth and complexity of contemporary environmental issues, (b) intercultural studies, that expose students to issues of cultural difference and social justice, (c) hands-on, participatory approaches to instruction that encourage student creativity and originality, (d) praxis-oriented instruction that builds core reading, writing, speaking and professional skills, (e) instruction that emphasizes problem solving skills and asks students to devise practical recommendations for real world problems, (f) field based education that gives students meaningful first-hand contact with topics found in their curriculum, and (g) theoretically robust approaches that encourage students to engage critical thinking skills so they are better able to question the presentation and substance of mainstream knowledge and accepted truths. 

Education

Post Doctoral Fellow, Environmental Policy | Stanford University | 2009
PhD, Geography | University of Washington | 2007
MESM, Environmental Science & Management | University of California Santa Barbara | 2001
BA, Economics | University of California Santa Cruz |1997

Simon, G. L., O'Grady, N., Grove, K., Eriksen, C., Chmutina, K., Emmenegger, R., Raju, E., Ay, D., Lüthi, S., Prior, T., Uyttewaal, K., & Zeffiri, F. (2025). A Reparative Paradigm for Thinking With Disasters. The Geographical Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.70057 

Quarles, H., & Simon, G. L. (2025). Platforming space: How food delivery platforms optimize users through physical, digital, and virtual space. Digital Geography and Society, 9, 100134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2025.100134 

Eriksen, C., & Simon, G. L. (2025). Social resilience research on climate-related hazards: Trends, accomplishments and shortcomings. PLOS Climate, 4(4), e0000496. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000496 

Eriksen, C., & Simon, G. L. (2025). Governing layers of shifting sands: Subterranean hazards, unfolding catastrophes and quotidian fragmentation. Geo: Geography and Environment, 12(1), n/a-n/a. https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.70014 

Eriksen, C., Kirschner, J., Simon, G. L., O'Grady, N., Uyttewaal, K., Lüthi, S., Prior, T., Zeffiri, F., Emmenegger, R., Ay, D., Chmutina, K., Raju, E., & Grove, K. (2025). From rigidity traps towards reparative disaster governance and management. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 125, 105603. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105603 

Simon, G., & Kay, K. (2025). Doing Political Ecology. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003165477 

Kelley, L.C & Simon, G. L. (2025). In, Doing Political Ecology. (Eds. Simon, G., & Kay, K) Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003165477 

Johnson, L., Mikulewicz, M., Bigger, P., Chakraborty, R., Cunniff, A., Griffen, J., Guermond, V., Lambrou, N., Mills-Novoa, M., Neimark, B., Nelson, S., Rampini, C., Sherpa, P., Simon., G. L. (2023). Intervention: The Invisible Labor of Climate Change Adaptation. Global Environmental Change, 83, 102769. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102769

Crane, N. J., Cooke, A., Ergler, C., Griffen, P., Holton, M., Rhiney, K., Robinson, C., Simon G. L. (2023). Whose Geography do we Review? Geography Compass, 17(2). https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12676

Birkenholtz, T. & Simon, G. L. (2022). Introduction to Themed Issue: Ignorance and Uncertainty in Environmental Decision-Making. Geoforum, 132, 154-161. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.12.003

Simon, G. L. (2022). Disingenuous natures and post-truth politics: Five knowledge modalities of concern in environmental governance. Geoforum, 132, 162-170. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.12.006 

Simon, G. L., Wee, B., Chatti, D., & Anderson, E. (2022). Drawing on knowledge: Visual narrative analysis for critical environment and development research. Environment and Planning. E, Nature and Space, 5(1), 293-317. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848620975340 

Simon, G. L., Peterson, C., Anderson, E., Berve, B., Caturia, M., & Rivera, I. (2021). Multiple Temporalities of Household Labour: The Challenge of Assessing Women's Empowerment. Development and Change, 52(2), 289-315. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12616 

Eriksen, C., Simon, G. L., Roth, F., Lakhina, S. J., Wisner, B., Adler, C., Thomalla, F., Scolobig, A., Brady, K., Bründl, M., Neisser, F., Grenfell, M., Maduz, L., & Prior, T. (2020). Rethinking the interplay between affluence and vulnerability to aid climate change adaptive capacity. Climatic Change, 162(1), 25-39. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-020-02819-x 

Chin, A., Simon, G. L., Anthamatten, P., Kelsey, K. C., Crawford, B. R., & Weaver, A. J. (2020). Pandemics and the future of human-landscape interactions. Anthropocene, 31, 100256-100256. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2020.100256 

Simon, G. L., & Peterson, C. (2019). Disingenuous forests: A historical political ecology of fuelwood collection in South India. Journal of Historical Geography, 63, 34-47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2018.09.003 

Simon, G. L. (2018). How the West Was Spun: The De-politicization of Fire in the American West. In, Lave R, Biermann C, Lane S. (eds) Handbook on Critical Physical Geography Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71461-5 

Bigger, P., Dempsey, J., Asiyanbi, A., Kay, K., Lave, R., Mansfield, B., Osborne, T., Robertson, M., Simon, G. L. (2018). Reflecting on Neoliberal Natures: An Exchange. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1(1-2), 25-75. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848618776864

Simon, G. L. (2017). Flame and fortune in the American West: urban development, environmental change, and the great Oakland Hills fire (Vol. 1.). University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780520966161 

Eriksen, C. & Simon, G. L. (2017). The Affluence-Vulnerability Interface: Intersecting Scales of Risk, Privilege and Disaster” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 49(2), 293-313. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X16669511

Kinoshita, A. M., Chin, A., Simon, G. L., Briles, C., Hogue, T. S., O’Dowd, A. P., Gerlak, A. K., & Albornoz, A. U. (2016). Wildfire, water, and society: Toward integrative research in the “Anthropocene”. Anthropocene, 16, 16-27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2016.09.001 

Chin, A., An, L., Florsheim, J. L., Laurencio, L. R., Marston, R. A., Solverson, A. P., Simon, G. L., Stinson, E., & Wohl, E. (2016). Investigating feedbacks in human–landscape systems: Lessons following a wildfire in Colorado, USA. Geomorphology (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 252, 40-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2015.07.030 

Simon, G. L., Bailis, R., Baumgartner, J., Hyman, J., & Laurent, A. (2014). Current debates and future research needs in the clean cookstove sector. Energy for Sustainable Development, 20, 49-57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esd.2014.02.006 

Simon, G. L. (2014). If you can't stand the heat, get into the kitchen: obligatory passage points and mutually supported impediments at the climate-development interface. Area (London 1969), 46(3), 268-277. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12110 

Simon, G. L. (2014). Vulnerability-in-Production: A Spatial History of Nature, Affluence, and Fire in Oakland, California. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 104(6), 1199-1221. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2014.941736 

Lave, R., Wilson, M., Barron, E., Biermann, C., Carey, M., Doyle, M., Duvall, C.,  Johnson, L., Lane, M., Lorimer, J., McClintock, N., Munroe, D., Pain, R., Proctor, J., Rhoads, B., Robertson, M., Rossi, J., Sayre, N., Simon, G. L., Tadaki, M., and Van Dyke, C. (2014). Intervention: Critical Physical Geography. The Canadian Geographer, 58(1) 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12061

Simon, G. L., Wee, B. S.-C., Chin, A., Tindle, A. D., Guth, D., & Mason, H. (2013). Synthesis for the Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences: Integrating Systems Approaches and Service Learning. Journal of College Science Teaching, 42(5), 42-49. https://doi.org/10.2505/4/jcst13_042_05_42 

Simon, G. L., & Dooling, S. (2013). Flame and fortune in California: The material and political dimensions of vulnerability. Global Environmental Change, 23(6), 1410-1423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.08.008 

Simon, G. L., & Alagona, P. S. (2013). Contradictions at the confluence of commerce, consumption and conservation; or, an REI shopper camps in the forest, does anyone notice? Geoforum, 45, 325-336. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.11.022 

Simon, G. L., Bumpus, A. G., & Mann, P. (2012). Win-win scenarios at the climate–development interface: Challenges and opportunities for stove replacement programs through carbon finance. Global Environmental Change, 22(1), 275-287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.08.007 

Bischel, H. N., Simon, G. L., Frisby, T. M., & Luthy, R. G. (2012). Management Experiences and Trends for Water Reuse Implementation in Northern California. Environmental Science & Technology, 46(1), 180-188. https://doi.org/10.1021/es202725e 

Simon, G. L. (2011). The 100th Meridian, Ecological Boundaries, and the Problem of Reification. Society & Natural Resources, 24(1), 95-101. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920903284374 

Day Biehler, D., & Simon, G. L. (2011). The Great Indoors: Research frontiers on indoor environments as active political-ecological spaces. Progress in Human Geography, 35(2), 172-192. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132510376851 

Simon, G. L., & Graybill, J. K. (2010). Geography in interdisciplinarity: Towards a third conversation. Geoforum, 41(3), 356-363. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.11.012 

Simon, G. L. (2010). Mobilizing Cookstoves for Development: A Dual Adoption Framework Analysis of Collaborative Technology Innovations in Western India. Environment and Planning. A, 42(8), 2011-2030. https://doi.org/10.1068/a42498 

Alagona, P. S., & Simon, G. L. (2010). The Role of Field Study in Humanistic and Interdisciplinary Environmental Education. The Journal of Experiential Education, 32(3), 191-206. https://doi.org/10.5193/JEE.32.3.191 

Alagona, P. S., & Simon, G. L. (2010). The Role of Field Study in Humanistic and Interdisciplinary Environmental Education. The Journal of Experiential Education, 32(3), 191-206. https://doi.org/10.1177/105382590903200302 

Simon, G. L., & Alagona, P. S. (2009). Beyond Leave No Trace. Ethics, Place and Environment, 12(1), 17-34. https://doi.org/10.1080/13668790902753021 

Simon, G. L. (2009). Geographies of mediation: Market development and the rural broker in Maharashtra, India. Political Geography, 28(3), 197-207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2009.05.002 

Graybill, J. K., Dooling, S., Shandas, V., Withey, J., Greve, A., & Simon, G. L. (2006). A Rough Guide to Interdisciplinarity: Graduate Student Perspectives. Bioscience, 56(9), 757-763. https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2006)56[757:ARGTIG]2.0.CO;2 

ENVS 1342:  Introduction to Environment, Society and Sustainability
GEOG 4/5420: The Politics of Nature
GEOG 4/5440: Science, Policy and the Environment
GEOG 4/5580: Urban Sustainability: Perspectives and Practice
GEOG 4700 /ENVS 5700: Synthesis for Interdisciplinary Science
GEOG 6300: Foundations Seminar in Human-Environment Interaction
GEOG 6750: Research Design
URPL 7014: PhD Seminar Colloquium