Jennifer Richter

Jennifer Richter is an associate professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She is also a senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. 

Her research interests are at the intersections of science, environment, and society, and she teaches courses on environmental justice, science and society, and energy policy. She is especially interested in how policies that govern innovations and research are created and then taken up by local populations, specifically in the American West. Professor Richter focuses on energy justice, specifically in relation to the cultural, political, and environmental issues that come with larger energy transitions. Her research has focused on the environmental and social issues related to nuclear waste storage, renewable energy production, and how policies are developed to address issues of production of resources, as well as contamination of land, water, and air.  By examining how science and technology policies collide with local expectations and understandings of environment and politics, Professor Richter explores the different effects of energy technologies and policies, and their effects on society at different scales, from the local to the global.  She is also co-director of a local student activist organization called Local to Global Justice, which brings together local activists with students to organize an annual Forum and Festival to highlight community activism locally and internationally.