Richard Mathew

Richard A. Matthew (BA McGill; PhD Princeton) is Associate Dean for Research and International Programs; Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy; and Director of the Blum Center for Poverty Alleviation at UC Irvine. He is also a Senior Fellow at IISD in Geneva, a senior member of the United Nations Expert Group on Environment, Conflict and Peacebuilding, and the Vice-President of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association. He is Co-PI of the FloodRISE and SedRise projects. He has served on several UN peacebuilding missions, including two that he led to Sierra Leone. His research focuses on understanding and addressing challenges at the intersection of severe environmental stress, extreme poverty and violent conflict. He has done extensive fieldwork in conflict and disaster zones worldwide. He has given four TEDx talks and been a featured storyteller on The Moth twice. He has over 160 publications.