Leonardo Figueroa Helland Appointed Chair of Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management Program

Leonardo Figueroa Helland, associate professor of Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management, has been appointed the chair of the Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management program.

Concerning his vision for EPSM, Figueroa shared, “For those looking to challenge the social and environmental injustices at the root of our planetary crises, our program fosters the diversity of knowledges and critical methodologies needed for systemic change. Here, a shared commitment to just sustainabilities fosters an intellectual community dedicated to transformative public engagement and social action.”

At Milano this fall, Figueroa will be teaching the courses “Climate Change: Systemic Crisis & Systemic Change” and “Indigenous Ecologies.” In the spring, he will teach another section of the Climate Change course in addition to the course “Global Environmental Politics & Policy.”

In addition to his teaching at Milano, Figueroa also leads the Indigeneity and Sustainability section of the Tishman Environment and Design Center. 

Find Figueroa’s full professional bio below. 


Leonardo E. Figueroa Helland is an Associate Professor of Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management at The New School. His research and teaching addresses planetary crises from Indigenous, decolonizing and radical ecological perspectives. Currently, he leads the Indigeneity and Sustainability section of the Tishman Environment and Design Center. As an anti-colonial scholar of mixed blood (Indigenous and European heritage), his work underlines how Indigenous resurgence, decolonization and the revitalization of biocultural diversity, alongside social, environmental and climate justice movements, are vital to overcome planetary crises. 

He triangulates Indigenous studies and decolonizing agendas with critical political ecology, critical global studies, biocultural diversity research, complex intersectional ecologism, world-systems ecology, ecofeminism, feminisms of color, and critical food studies to articulate systemic alternatives. His writings underline issues like convergent global crises and counterhegemonic politics, coloniality and the ‘Anthropocene’, imperialism, resistance and re-Indigenization, gendered economies and socioecological reproduction, the regeneration of the commons, biocultural diversity, agroecology and food sovereignty, and social movements and p/re-figurative politics.

Building and extending beyond his doctoral work on Indigenous Philosophy and World Politics, his latest writings appear in the Journal of World Systems Research, the journal Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, the volume on Social Movements and World-System Transformation, and the forthcoming volumes on Anarchist Political Ecology and on Contesting Extinctions: Critical Relationality, Regenerative Futures. He is currently working on a manuscript titled “Anthropocene” Collapse / Indigenous Resurgence: From Planetary Crises to Decolonization. He is also co-editing a volume on Indigenous Resurgence and Systemic Alternatives beyond Global Crises. Leonardo is also a co-convener of the Latin American Observatory of the Humanities for the Environment.

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