Fellow 2026-2027 Emily Ray
Emily Ray is an Associate Professor of Politics at Sonoma State University. Her expertise is in environmental political theory, social theory, culture, and politics. Her research explores political and cultural responses to climate change, including doomsday prepping and outer space settlement.
Broadly, she is interested in the individualistic and anti-democratic approaches to surviving climate change, and how apocalyptic thinking in the US influences the political and cultural responses to a collectively experienced polycrisis. She is the co-author of the book Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States (Columbia University Press, 2024), which argues that Americans are habituated to a "bunkerized" subjectivity co-produced with the institutional history of individual-oriented survival. Her work has appeared in Theory & Event, Contemporary Political Theory, New Political Science, The Guardian, Wired, and Psyche.