David Gordon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of California Santa Cruz, whose research focuses on the role of sub-national entities – and especially cities – in global climate governance, with a special interest in the politics of transformative urban sustainability.
His first book, Cities on the World Stage: The Politics of Global Urban Climate Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2020) looks at the power dynamics that enable attempts to coordinate city climate governance and the ways in which this shapes the substance of climate policy, through an in-depth study of the C40 city-network.
Dr. Gordon is currently pursuing research on novel regimes of global urban accountability in the governance of climate change, the interface between local and global accountability commitments, and evaluating the transformative potential of city-led efforts. His work has been published in journals including Global Environmental Politics, Environmental Politics, Nature Climate Change, Environment and Planning C, WIREs Climate Change, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, and the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal.