I’m Claire Cahen (she/ her/ hers), an urbanist, researcher and educator living and working in Los Angeles. I research and write about municipal austerity and public sector union renewal—how workers are responding to decades of cuts to public services, how they are forming new labor-community alliances in the process, and the relationship between inequality and the privatization of public goods, especially public education. I hold a PhD in Environmental Psychology from The Graduate Center at the City University of New York. I am also an Assistant Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy at Occidental College.

In my writing, I think about what it takes for workers to revive the labor movement after decades of union decline. I also think about how labor can contest financialization and, particularly, how educator unions can push back against governance by debt and speculative practices that have accelerated inequality and disinvestment in public schools. These research questions grew out of my professional background as a union organizer, as well as from my time at CUNY, the largest urban public higher education system in the country.

I am currently teaching a course on community organizing, as well as several survey courses in urban and environmental studies. I am also affiliated with The Racial Imaginary Institute, where I have been participating in a seminar “on nationalism and the fragility and possibility of ‘we'”. My work has appeared in journals such as Environment and Planning D, the Journal of Race Ethnicity and the City, and Antipode.

On this site, you can view and download my full CV, read my personal teaching and research blog, and view my recent publications.

Reach out at cahen at oxy.edu.