Rate My Professor Liz Koslov

Her research employs an ethnographic approach to analyze the politics of urban climate change adaptation, with a focus on debates surrounding responses to sea-level rise, flooding, and wildfire, critically examining managed retreat from high-risk areas. She is writing Retreat: Moving to Higher Ground in a Climate-Changed City, under advance contract with the University of Chicago Press, detailing homeowners in Staten Island, New York, who organized for buyouts after Hurricane Sandy. Key publications include 'Critically Assessing the Idea of Wildfire Managed Retreat' with Kathryn McConnell (Environmental Research Letters, 2024), 'When rebuilding no longer means recovery: The stress of staying put after Hurricane Sandy' with Alexis Merdjanoff, Elana Sulakshana, and Eric Klinenberg (Climatic Change, 2021), 'Avoiding climate change: “Agnostic adaptation” and the politics of public silence' (Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2019), and 'The Case for Retreat' (Public Culture, 2016). Koslov has secured significant funding, including a National Science Foundation grant as PI for 'Assessing managed retreat as an adaptive response to wildfire risk' (2023-2025), a Faculty Research Grant from UCLA's Ziman Center (2023-2025), and fellowships such as the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2016). She teaches on climate change via the built environment, social life of sea-level rise, and environmental justice, and serves in leadership roles including Chair of the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Committee at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability (2023-2025), Legislative Assembly Representative for the UCLA Academic Senate (2024-2026), and Undergraduate Program Coordinator for Urban Planning (2022-2023). Her scholarship informs public discourse, with contributions to The New York Times and other outlets.