Expertise

Environmental Justice, Political Ecology, Climate Change Adaptation, Infrastructure, Climate Finance, Borders, International Environmental Politics, Resource Governance, Water, Vietnam, Asia

Biography

I am a human-environment geographer with broad interests in environmental justice, climate change adaptation, human vulnerability to environmental hazards, infrastructure, state borders, and resource conflicts. 

My research aims to understand how environmental insecurity and vulnerability are produced and reproduced, even by well-intentioned projects for international development and climate change adaptation. Part of this work includes tracing the distribution and impacts of adaptation finance aimed at reducing climate vulnerability in Vietnam and Bangladesh. I am also investigating with collaborators the uneven development arising through everyday practices of resource extraction, commodity production, and waste. The goal with these projects is ultimately to move beyond problem identification and critique towards enacting equitable, just, and liberatory practices grounded in an ethics of solidarity and care. 

This current research focus builds on my earlier work on international river governance in South Asia, where I combined qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze disputes between India and Bangladesh over their shared water resources. Here, water infrastructure informs conflicts not only at the international level, but also sub-nationally, where embankments in coastal Bangladesh have a complex history of providing storm protection and increasing flood risk. 

I am an active member of the American Association of Geographers and have served on the boards of two specialty groups. These positions include Councilor-at-Large (2016-2018) and Chair (2018-2020) of the Cultural and Political Ecology (CAPE) Specialty Group and Faculty Board Member of the Political Geography Specialty Group (2021-2023).

Curriculum Vitae | Website

Selected Publications

• Thomas, K. and K. Rhiney. 2025. Moving beyond a climate politics of justice with no peace. Climate and Development. 16(9): 1 - 8. https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2024.2444329
• Baird, I. et al. 2025. Ruin-of-the-rivers? A global review of run-of-the-river dams. Environmental Management. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-024-02062-5
• Thomas, K. 2024. Accumulation by adaptation. Geography Compass. 18(1): e12731. http://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12731
• Thomas, K. 2023. Compelled to compete: Rendering climate change vulnerability investable. Development and Change. 54(2): 223–250. http://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12756
• Kelley, L., S. Shattuck, and K. Thomas. 2022. Cumulative socio-natural displacements: Reconceptualizing climate displacements in a world already on the move. Annals of the American Association of Geographers. 112(3): 664–673. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2021.1960144
• Thomas, K. 2021. International rivers as border infrastructures: En/forcing borders in South Asia. Political Geography. 89: 102448.  
• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102448
• Strube, J. and K. Thomas. 2021. Damming Rainy Lake and the ongoing production of hydro-colonialism in the US-Canadian Boundary Waters. Water Alternatives. 14(1): 19–41. http://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol14/v14issue1/607-a14-1-2/file
• Thomas, K. 2020. The problem with solutions: Development failures in Bangladesh and the interests they obscure. Annals of the American Association of Geographers. 110(5): 1631–1651. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2019.1707641
• Thomas, K. 2020. Shifting baselines of disaster mitigation. Climate and Development. 12(2): 147–150. 
  https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2019.1605875
• Thomas, K. and B. Warner. 2019. Weaponizing vulnerability to climate change. Global Environmental Change. 57: 1–11.
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.101928
• Thomas, K. et al. 2019. Explaining differential vulnerability to climate change: a social science review. WIREs Climate Change. 10(2): e565.
  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcc.565 
• Thomas, K. 2017. The Ganges Water Treaty: 20 years of cooperation, on India’s terms. Water Policy. 19(4): 724–740. 
  https://doi.org/10.2166/wp.2017.109
• Thomas, K. 2017. Governing international rivers in the Anthropocene. IN: Clarke-Sather et al. The shifting geopolitics of water in the Anthropocene. Geopolitics. 22(2): 332–359.
• Thomas, K. 2017. The river-border complex: A border-integrated approach to transboundary river governance illustrated by the Ganges River and Indo-Bangladeshi border. Water International. 42(1): 34–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2016.1247236

 

​Courses Taught

• GUS 5042: Climate Change and Security
• GUS 5056: Political Ecology
• GUS 8097: Research Design
• ENST 2001: Environment and Society
• ENST 3000: Global Capitalism, Labor, and the Environment