Kieren Rudge is a political ecologist centering climate justice across islands and oceans. Their research is concerned with explaining and challenging the social-political structures that reproduce harm and provide the foundation for inequitable futures. By focusing on militarization, climate change adaptation, and racialization throughout the Pacific they emphasize how communities are differently marginalized by common systems. As a PhD candidate at University of California Berkeley, I examine military-led adaptation through a comparative case study in two locations with distinct relationships to the U.S. empire: the unincorporated island territory of Guåhan (Guam) and San Diego County, California in the mainland United States. Beyond uncovering injustice, I seek to collaboratively vision and generate transformative climate justice through place-based environmental stewardship and community-building across geographies.

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Rudge is also a co-founder of the Critical Pacific Islands Studies Collective (CPISC), a growing network of Pacific Islanders and allies who conduct interdisciplinary research, mentor students, and support the equitable study of the Pacific. Among other projects, they co-led CPISC to build a public archive of environmental contamination in the Marianas, and to produce The Oceanic Podcast, sharing stories and visions from across Oceania. They received their Master of Environmental Science from Yale University and a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science from Johns Hopkins University.