He teaches primarily in the Global and Social Justice Tracks, offering courses in environmental justice, mapping, global migration, and long-term political and environmental change. Dr. Watkins received a PhD in Geography and Anthropology from Louisiana State University where he studied cultural-historical geographies and human-environment interaction. As a geographer and political ecologist, Dr. Watkins researches how political and economic power shape environmental issues and changes. Drawing on fieldwork in New Orleans and Northeast Brazil, his previous and ongoing projects have examined urban socio-spatial patterns as they relate to disaster; transnational migration, identity, and citizenship; colonial landscape transformations; agrarian, development, and environmental politics; and agro-ecological change in the African diaspora.