Stephen J. Collier appointed chair of the Department of City & Regional Planning
The College of Environmental Design is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Stephen J. Collier to a three-year term as chair of the Department of City & Regional Planning. He succeeds Daniel G. Chatman, who is serving as interim dean of the college for the 2026–2027 academic year. Collier, who earned his PhD in anthropology from UC Berkeley, will also hold the Perloff Family Chair in City & Regional Planning. His research and teaching focus on planning theory, climate adaptation, and finance.
“I am grateful for Stephen’s experienced leadership at this historical moment for the Department of City & Regional Planning, when its work is becoming more relevant and timely,” said Chatman. “Stephen’s steady, collaborative approach will benefit the department and college as it carries out additional faculty hiring and a new strategic planning process in the next few years.”
Collier joined the department in 2018. Previously, he was on the faculty of the Graduate Program in International Affairs at The New School in New York City, where he also served as chair. This past year, he was a Mercator Fellow at the Goethe University in Frankfurt.
At CED, he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on city planning and climate change, planning theory, and infrastructure planning and policy. He has just concluded a term as program chair for the PhD in City & Regional Planning.
“It is an exciting time to think about strategic directions for our programs,” said Collier. “City planning and policymaking are critical to addressing so many of the most urgent issues of our time, from climate adaptation and mitigation to housing and broader issues of affordability. UC Berkeley’s Department of City & Regional Planning has always been a leader in engaging contemporary problems through practical engagement, scholarly research, tool building, and social theory. I look forward to working with faculty, students, and alums on continuing this tradition.”
Collier’s widely published interdisciplinary scholarship focuses on climate resilience and adaptation, emergency preparedness and emergency management, neoliberal reform, infrastructure, and urban social welfare. He is the author of Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics (2011) and the co-author, with Andrew Lakoff, of The Government of Emergency: System Vulnerability, Expertise, and the Politics of Security (2021), which the British Journal of Sociology calls a “thrilling intellectual history [and an] an important contribution to a growing line of scholarship that critically approaches the concept of ‘disaster’ itself.”
His recent articles include “Insurance and the Irrationalization of Disaster Policy” (British Journal of Sociology, 2025), “The Disaster Contradiction of Contemporary Capitalism” (Geoforum, 2025), and, with Yael Nidam, “Disorderly Adaptation to Climate Change” (Nature NPJ: Urban Sustainability, 2025).
Collier is currently working on a range of research and editorial projects that examine issues such as fire risk and adaptive change in California, conceptual debates about resilience in the interpretive human sciences, the government of climate emergencies, and the relationship between finance and urban adaptation to climate change.
Founded in 1948, the Department of City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley is one of three academic departments in the College of Environmental Design. It offers three top-ranked degree programs: the bachelor of arts in urban studies, the professional Master of City Planning, and the PhD in City & Regional Planning. The department’s mission is to improve equity, the economy, and the environment — from the scale of the neighborhood to that of the metropolitan region — by creating knowledge and engagement through teaching, research, and service.