Environmental Social Sciences, the newest department in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, has launched its graduate degree program.
Students may pursue a PhD in one of the department’s two broad focus areas – Environmental Behavioral Sciences or Global Environmental Policy – and will learn with interdisciplinary faculty from a range of perspectives, including economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, legal studies, social ecology, applied data science, and more. Their commonality is a deep passion for sustainability.
“It’s a very diverse group of faculty and that makes it incredibly exciting for incoming graduate students,” said William Barnett, department chair. “Often PhD programs reproduce the specialized intellectual knowledge of the advisor. But what’s unique about our program is that it will create all sorts of new combinations of knowledge as students pursue themes of sustainability across the social sciences.”
The Environmental Social Sciences Department launched in 2022 as a division and became an official department in December 2023 with more than a dozen faculty, some joint with other departments and schools. Since then, seven new faculty have been hired, totaling more than two dozen in the department.
Practical, theory-based approach
Social science – the study of human society and social relationships – is essential for creating large-scale economic and social transformations toward a more sustainable future. In line with the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability’s goals for impact, students in the doctoral program will pave new intellectual ground rooted in established theory, with solutions-oriented results.
“Strength in the social sciences is essential for the educational mission of our school,” said Lynn Hildemann, senior associate dean for education. “Research and courses in this new department will enable our graduates to build partnerships with communities and make meaningful progress in all the areas of sustainability represented by our school.”
The educational programs are not just about understanding the types of sustainability problems challenging global systems and populations, but also finding ways to overcome them.
“Environmental Social Sciences is an engine that creates knowledge and at the same time solves these problems in the world,” Barnett said.
Following a cohort model, students won’t be locked into an advisor when they apply. Instead, they will explore academic pathways and create interdisciplinary research questions by working across the department. The questions themselves can be as diverse as the students asking them, influenced by the breadth of faculty available, said Nicole Ardoin, an associate professor of environmental social sciences who researches individual and collective action behaviors.
The department is building an unparalleled collection of world-leading academics across social sciences disciplines, Barnett said. Some of the most recent hires include Assistant Professor Hélène Benveniste, who looks at the climate effects on human migration from an international policy and politics standpoint; Assistant Professor Madalina Vlasceanu, who studies the cognitive, behavioral, and societal barriers to addressing climate change; and Assistant Professor Sara Constantino, who studies what shapes human responses to extreme climate events.
New hires at the senior level include Professor Solomon Hsiang, who uses data, social sciences, and natural sciences to answer policy questions with global impact, and Professor Hunt Allcott, who is addressing sustainability by asking questions about electricity markets and how to influence consumers to buy more sustainable products.
“In environmental behavioral sciences, we’re asking a lot of questions related to governance and power and privilege – who has power when it comes to making decisions, who is included and who isn’t included in decision making, how that might change in different geographic contexts or due to the impacts of scale,” Ardoin said. “Those questions might require an institutional lens from sociology or political science, or maybe anthropology to understand the socio-cultural perspectives. We also bring in theories from social psychology to understand the norms and relationships involved.”
In the environmental policy area, students bring economics, political science, and data sciences approaches to understand who benefits or is harmed by a policy or environmental change, and what impediments stand in the way of policy adoption.
Those lenses suggest different types of research approaches students can use to study a problem, and ultimately design possible solutions.
“You’ll often hear people talk about theory and practice being at odds with each other, and they are not,” Barnett said. “For instance, when one of our scholars comes up with a fundamental theory about organizational design that shows how to change organizations, that’s also super practical knowledge that’s important to sustainability.”
Interdisciplinary learning
During the first three quarters in the program, students will participate in a workshop sequence within one of the two focus areas to set the foundation for their research and coursework. Global Environmental Policy students drill down into environmental economics, environmental politics, and environmental data science and policy evaluation. In Environmental Behavioral Sciences, core courses during the first year focus on human institutions, human ecology, and human behavior.
The coursework must be interdisciplinary because the sustainability challenges facing the globe can’t be solved from one angle.
In EBS 220: The Psychological Foundations of Climate Solutions, Vlasceanu will teach students about research on the psychological factors behind climate action, such as how perception, memory, and emotions influence decision making. A course taught by Barnett, EBS 230: Leading Environmental Sustainability by Design, aims to expand students’ understanding of the global biological, cultural, social, and economic processes involved in sustainability. EBS 240: Becoming a Sustainability Leader, shows participants how to lead and manage others on their journey to a more sustainable world.
Students in Global Environmental Policy can select courses such as GEP 130/230: Empirical Environmental Economics, which uses data science to study environmental and energy policy; GEP 135/245: Data Science for Environmental Business, which involves case studies of real-world business problems brought by industry guest speakers; and GEP 228: Topics and Methods in Global Environmental Policy, where students will learn cutting-edge methodological techniques at the intersection of spatial data and causal inference.
Broad future
While Stanford University has a long history of including social sciences in many schools, the Environmental Social Sciences Department is the first to coalesce social sciences and sustainability in graduate education.
Environmental Social Sciences graduates will find opportunities as wide ranging as the program itself. Changing economic and environmental demands have created an increasing need for environmental social scientists.
“Since industrialization, human activity has been seriously reshaping the world in unsustainable ways, and these trends are increasing. In response, many are now working to reverse these trends. We need to accelerate these changes if the world economy is to become sustainable. Young people see that and want to be a part of that revolution,” Barnett said. “The 20th century was when we mastered mass production and consumption. The 21st century is when we will master sustainable production and consumption.”
The growing demand for expertise will create opportunities for graduates to become professionals in consulting, government, nonprofits, policy, and industry, as well as become the next generation of faculty in other social science-based programs.
Beyond that, they’ll be prepared to be thoughtful, engaged citizens committed to sustainability.
“I would love for them to leave the PhD program recognizing their multiple identities as they go into the world, for them to feel equipped to participate in different ways, bringing along a sense of intellectual humility,” Ardoin said. “You leave with a degree that means you’re qualified to continue doing research, but also to continue learning. That’s my hope for all of us – that we build this community of lifelong learners, and that our work is ongoing.”
To learn more, visit the Graduate Program section of the Environmental Social Sciences website. Applications for the first cohort of the Environmental Behavioral Sciences program are open until Tuesday, Nov. 12, for admission in Fall 2025; the Global Environmental Policy doctoral program will begin accepting applications next fall for the 2026-27 academic year.