Hillary Angelo is an urban and environmental sociologist and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research on environment and urbanization includes historical and contemporary work on urban greening, sustainability planning, and climate change. She is currently writing a book on public lands and the energy transition, which treats America’s public lands as a key site to ask and answer questions about climate crisis, social crisis, and paths of social change in the 21st century. Before graduate school, she worked for five years with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, primarily on issues of participatory design, immigration, and public space use.

She got to know southern Utah through her research, and on frequent drives across the country between California and New York, and now spends as much time in the desert as possible.