Jennifer Givens

Biography

Dr. Givens is an environmental and comparative international sociologist. Broadly, she studies coupled human and natural systems. Her research and teaching interests include environmental sociology, environmental justice, global and comparative sociology, political economy, development and well-being, climate change, and research methods. In some of her research she examines environmental and social sustainability across nation-states, and she studies how these relationships change over time. She also investigates variation in countries’ carbon intensity of well-being (CIWB), which is a way to measure a country’s progress toward simultaneous environmental and social sustainability by asking how carbon intensely nation-states produce well-being for citizens. This research explores the effects of unequal global integration and militarization, addresses issues of inequality, human well-being, sustainability, and energy use, and explores the connections between development and drivers of climate change. She also studies the CIWB at sub-national scales. In other research, she explores various forms of environmental concern and action and their causes and consequences, both across and within nations. Dr. Givens has also worked on interdisciplinary research funded by the National Science Foundation, including research on food, energy, and water systems, and glacier melt, sea level rise, water resources, and climate change adaptation including migration. Locally, she conducts social science research on issues related to Utah’s Great Salt Lake. She conducts mixed-methods and quantitative research and her quantitative research employs both longitudinal and multilevel modeling techniques.