About

Dr. Matt Hodgetts (he/him/his) is the George B. Mayer Chair in Urban and Environmental Studies, co-chair of CWRU CAN (Climate Action Network), and Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Political Science. For Spring 2025, he will be a Faculty Affiliate of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities. He begins as Instructor of Political Science in July 2025.

Dr. Hodgetts works in the field of environmental political thought (EPT). His current book project, co-authored with Kevin McGravey (Merrimack College), examines how the treatment and protection of speech in the United States has historically hindered but has the potential to promote climate action. Portions of the project appear in Environmental Values and Ethics, Policy & Environment. His next project explores the importance of hope and the place of climate utopianism within activist discourses on climate action.

Dr. Hodgetts is co-PI on the Cleveland Regional Decarbonization Framework (CRDF), a multi-institution project led by CWRU and funded by a major grant from the City of Cleveland to assist in the development of a Comprehensive Climate Action Plan for the Cleveland-Elyria MSA to be submitted to the EPA in 2025. His project role is co-lead, with Cyrus Taylor (Physics), of the Climate Science Working Group (CSWG) that is developing a course on Regional Climate Action Planning drawing on and in support of the CRDF.

Dr. Hodgetts has been a nominee for the Carl F. Wittke Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2023/24) and the J. Bruce Jackson, M.D. Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Mentoring (2021/22). He has been a Learning Fellow (Spring 2020) with the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education (UCITE) and is currently working on a project exploring fiction writing assignments funded by a UCITE Course Innovation Grant (2024/25).

Dr. Hodgetts regularly teaches Introduction to International Relations (POSC 172) and Introduction to Comparative Politics (POSC 160), typically in alternating semesters. Every year, he typically teaches one of American Political Thought (POSC 352), Political Ideologies (POSC 355), and Utopian and Dystopian Political Visions (POSC 350), along with either Global Politics of the Climate Crisis (ESTD/POSC 388) or Environmental Justice (ESTD/POSC 387), the development of the latter being the subject of an in progress invited book chapter for an edited volume on pedagogy and EPT.

Dr. Hodgetts received his PhD in Political Science from Brown University. He also holds a MA in Political Science from McGill University and a BA (Hons) in Political Studies and Philosophy from Queen’s University, both in his native Canada. Before joining the department as a Visiting Assistant Professor in July 2018, he previously taught at Clark, Roger Williams, and Brown Universities, and worked as a research assistant at a public health agency.

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