John Hannigan

Professor Hannigan’s research focuses on environmental sociology, notably the future prospects for deep oceans; the sociology of risk and global disasters; and the political economy of urban entertainment and leisure sites. He served for five years as Associate Chair, Graduate Studies, in the tri-campus Department of Sociology. From 2000-2003 he was Secretary of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association (CSAA). Professor Hannigan has published six books: Environmental Sociology (1995, 2006, 2014, 2022), translated into Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese; Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (1998); Disasters Without Borders: The International Politics of Natural Disasters (2012); The Geopolitics of Deep Oceans (2015); The SAGE Handbook of New Urban Studies (2017), co-edited with Greg Richards; Rise of the Spectacular: America in the 1950s (2021). He currently serves as Associate Chair, Faculty and Research, in the UTSC Department of Sociology.

Education

Ph.D., Ohio State University

Teaching Interests

• Environment and Society

• Urban Cultural Policies

• Sociology of the Arctic

Research Interests

• Sociology of the Environment

• Geopolitics and Culture of Deep Oceans

• Political Economy of Spectacular Urban Spaces

Recent Publications

• Environmental Sociology [4th revised edition] (London and New York: Routledge, 2022).

• Rise of the Spectacular: America in the 1950s (London and New York: Routledge, 2021).

• 2020. “Media and the Environmental Movement in a Digital Age.” In Katherine Legun, Julie C. Keller, Michael Carolan and Michael M. Bell (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology [Volume 1] (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 197-205.

• 2017. “Toward a Sociology of Oceans.” Canadian Review of Sociology 54(1): 8-27.

• The Geopolitics of Deep Oceans (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2015).