Tom Perreault

Tom Perreault is professor and chair of geography and the environment in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He also serves as the DellPlain Professor of Latin American Geography. Perreault was named a 2018-21 Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor of Teaching Excellence. The position recognizes and rewards outstanding teaching at the University, and emphasizes the great importance of teaching and improving learning processes for students.

As a globally known political ecologist, Perreault’s teaching focuses on the fields of political ecology, environmental justice, agrarian political economy and rural development. Since joining the University community in 2000, Perreault has developed a suite of seven courses that he offers in regular rotation.

Professor Perreault’s research revolves around the relationship between people and their environments, with an emphasis on questions of social justice and political economy. In particular, his scholarship explores how rural peoples and their organizations access, manage, struggle over, and organize themselves in relation to nature and natural resources in the central Andes and western Amazon in South America.

Perreault has written countless journal articles and book chapters. He has also edited a number of books, including Water Justice published by Cambridge University Press in 2018, and The Handbook of Political Ecology published by London: Routledge in 2015. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado.