Kendra Kintzi

About

Kendra Kintzi, PhD is a 2023 Cornell Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellow affiliated with the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. Her research focuses on the politics of decarbonization, climate justice, and the possibilities for inclusive, democratic environmental governance in Jordan and across Southwest Asia. She is currently working in partnership with the Jain Family Institute on a collaborative research project examining place-based socio-environmental mobilization and the digital governance of transborder energy systems. Trained as an interdisciplinary social scientist, she draws on the tools of political ecology, digital geography, and urban studies to explore the sociospatial dynamics of environmental and infrastructural change. 

Kendra’s work on smart development and digital mobilization has been published in The Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Big Data and Society, Geography Compass, and New Mandala. Over the course of her graduate training, she also worked to apply the insights of critical theory to inform grounded research and advocacy efforts. She was the lead author of an in-depth research report on natural gas development in the Global South and a contributing author on a qualitative analysis of girls’ educational experiences in East Africa in the wake of COVID-19. She has co-authored three forthcoming book chapters in edited volumes on climate, science, and society; smart infrastructure; and gender and agriculture. Kendra’s research was awarded grants from the Society of Woman Geographers, Fulbright-Hays (declined), Fulbright-IIE, ACOR-CAORC, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Cornell Qualitative and Interpretive Methods Institute, and the Cornell Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. She is the recipient of a Digital Geography Student Paper Award from the American Association of Geographers, the Taitz Graduate Student Paper Award in Development Sociology, and a Graduate Racial Justice Fellowship from the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.       

Kendra brings over a decade of on-the-ground experience working in international development to her scholarship, teaching, and engagement. Her experience ranges from the grassroots to the bilateral level, including work with community-based environmental and refugee assistance centers in the Levant as well as the US Trade and Development Agency, Oxfam, and Amplify Girls. She speaks Arabic and French, and has conducted fieldwork in eleven countries across Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Education

• Ph.D. in Development Sociology, Cornell University
• Master of Science in Development Sociology, Cornell University
• Bachelor of Arts in Development Studies and Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley (Highest Honors in Development Studies)

Publications

• Kintzi, K. (in press). The Smart Grid Archipelago: Infrastructures of Networked (Dis)Connectivity in Amman. Environment and Planning D, Special Issue on Digital Transformations in Global Land, Housing, and Property.
• Kintzi, K. (in press). Solar Affordances and the Struggle for Climate Justice in Southwest Asia. In Baker, Z., Law, T., Vardy, M., Zehr, S. (eds.), Climate, Science, and Society: A Primer. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Climate-Science-and-Society-A-Primer/Baker-Law-Vardy-Zehr/p/book/9781032530178
• Faxon, H., Kintzi, K., Tran, M., Awng, J., Htut, S. (2023). Organic Online Politics: Farmers, Facebook, and Myanmar’s Military Coup. Big Data and Society, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231168101.
• Faxon, H. & Kintzi, K. (2022). Critical geographies of smart development. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 47(4), 898– 911. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12560.
• Faxon, H., Kintzi, K., Tran, M., Wine, K.Z., Htut, S. (2023, May 30). Farmers, Facebook and Myanmar’s coup. New Mandala. https://www.newmandala.org/farmers-facebook-and-myanmars-coup/.
• Oulo, B., Sidle, A.A., Kintzi, K., Mwangi, M., Akello, I. (2021). “Understanding the Barriers to Girls’ School Return: Girls’ Voices from the Frontline of the COVID-19 Pandemic in East Africa.” AMPLIFY Girls Research Brief. Nairobi, Kenya.
• Kintzi, K. (2020). Review of the book THE LICIT LIFE OF CAPITALISM: U.S. Oil in Equatorial Guinea, by Hannah Appel. Geographical Review. DOI: 10.1080/00167428.2020.1851081.
• Kintzi, K. (2019). Natural Gas for Development? Understanding the opportunities and challenges for gas in a context of climate change. Oxfam Research Backgrounder Series, 1-89. https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/natural-gas-for-development/

Thesis & committee

Kendra’s dissertation project is entitled “Glittering Metropolis: Cultivating Renewability in the Land of the Sun.” It explores how renewable energy transition shapes the terrain of political action, focusing on Jordan’s ambitious renewable and smart energy development program. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork based in Amman, her dissertation contributes to critical scholarship on the uneven development of global digital infrastructures and the evolving urban impacts of decarbonization. Kendra is advised by Lori Leonard (chair), Wendy Wolford, Jenny Goldstein, and Mostafa Minawi.

Current grants 

• 2021: Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellow, US Department of Education (declined)
• 2021: Pruitt Dissertation Research Fellowship, Society of Woman Geographers
• 2021: Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, Council of American Overseas Research Centers
• 2021: Andrew W. Mellon Student Research Grant, Cornell Graduate School
• 2021: Qualitative and Interpretive Research Institute Small Grant, Cornell Center for Social Science
• 2019: Fulbright US Student Research Award and Critical Language Enhancement Award, US Department of State
• 2019: National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, Honorable Mention

Awards & honors

• 2023: Digital Geography Student Paper Award, Association of American Geographers
• 2022: Global Racial Justice Graduate Fellowship, Mario Einaudi Center, Cornell University
• 2019: Taietz Award for best graduate student conference paper, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences