Position Title
Visiting Researcher
Kristin George Bagdanov is a researcher, writer, editor, and environmental advocate. She received her PhD in Literature from U.C. Davis, where she studied the relationship between cultural production, energy crises, and social movements. Her dissertation, “Nuclear Poetics: Energizing Social Forms in Cold War America” explored how poet-activists shaped the anti-nuclear movement in the U.S. during the 1970s and 80s. Specifically, it explores how Black, Indigenous, queer, feminist, and anti-capitalist writers theorized America’s radioactive nation-building project.
Dr. George Bagdanov currently works as the Associate Director of Research at the Building Decarbonization Coalition, where her research helps shape the policies that support the equitable removal of fossil fuels from the built environment. She writes Cheaper Heat, a Substack newsletter that brings together her literary, historical, and policy research to explore the infrastructures of heat and what it would take to make energy affordable, clean, and just. She also holds an M.F.A., is the author of two poetry collections, Fossils in the Making (Black Ocean) and Diurne (Tupelo Press), and serves as the poetry book review editor for the Colorado Review.
You can read her publications and find out more about her work at kristingeorgebagdanov.com.