Michael Levien

Michael Levien is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, affiliated with the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute (ROSEI). His research bridges ethnography and social theory, focusing on large-scale political economic forces in localized contexts.

Research interests: Development sociology, agrarian political economy, political sociology, social theory, ethnography, and India. His current work examines climate change and energy transition politics in U.S. fossil fuel regions, particularly carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Louisiana.

Academic background: PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley (2013). He has published extensively on land dispossession, agrarian Marxism, and comparative studies of India and China.