Damian White

Damian White is a political sociologist and political theorist. His current research interests are focused on the political sociology of design/architecture and planning; environmental-labor studies, labor-centered and worker-centered design; urban political ecology; post-carbon transitions; the political sociology of design futuring; and the politics of populism.

White is the author/editor of five books. His first book Bookchin-A Critical Appraisal (Pluto Press, UK/University of Michigan Press USA, 2008) provided the first book-length comprehensive critical engagement with the pioneering social and urban ecologist and critical theorist Murray Bookchin. He has produced two edited collections with the geographer Chris Wilbert. Technonatures: Environments, Technologies, Spaces and Places in the Twenty-First Century (Wilfred Laurier Press, 2009) explores the field of post-humanist and cyborg urban political ecologies. Autonomy, Solidarity, Possibility: The Colin Ward Reader (AK Press, 2011) is a commentary and edited selection of the writings of the architectural critic, environmental planner, social historian, and champion of DIY design and architecture Colin Ward. Environments, Nature and Social Theory (Palgrave Macmillian, 2016) with Alan Rudy and Brian Gareau offers a critique and reworking of environmental sociology. His most recent book Designing the Just Transition: Design Politics, Labor and the Battle for Post Carbon Futures (Bloomsbury, 2026) was co-written with the architect and ecological designer Nicholas Pevzner. This book explores how design, architecture, and planning have engaged with questions of labor and ecology over the past 100 years and maps a path for a politics of democratic worldmaking. White has been on the editorial board of Design Philosophy Papers and CNS and has been a guest editor of Science as Culture and InTAR: Journal of Adaptive Reuse.

Prior to academia, White worked in the financial services industry in London for a number of years and taught “A level” political science and sociology to 16-to-18-year-old students in community college. He completed post-doctoral research at the University of East London on EU-funded research on sustainable technological innovation and the public understanding of science, and after this held academic positions at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and James Madison University in Virginia. At RISD, White has been department head of History, Philosophy and the Social Sciences (2012–16) and dean of Liberal Arts (2017–22). He was awarded the Edna Schaffer Humanist Award in 2008 and the John R. Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2012.