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Diane Sicotte, PhD, Drexel University Professor of Sociology

Diane Sicotte, PhD

Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology
Office: 3201 Arch Street, Room 203
dms76@drexel.edu

Additional Sites:

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Education:

  • PhD, Sociology, Arizona State University, 2003
  • MA, Sociology, Arizona State University
  • BS, Sociology, Portland State University

Curriculum Vitae:

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Research Interests:

  • Environmental Sociology
  • Environmental inequality and injustice
  • Political economy of energy and environment
  • Labor and environment
  • Plastics in society

Bio:

Diane Sicotte, PhD is an environmental sociologist with research interests in environmental injustice and inequality, energy and labor, and plastics in society. In 2018 she (and Co-P.I. Kelly Joyce) received a grant from the National Science Foundation, Award #1827464, to study the energy preferences of U.S. labor unions and their members and leaders in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Recent publications examine how energy workers view climate change and a possible transition away from fossil fuel use; how fracked natural gas liquids contribute to accumulations of waste plastics; how environmental policy in the U.S. can move away from recycling and toward source reduction as a way to deal with plastic waste; and environmental injustice generated by global commodity chains producing plastics. Much of her environmental justice scholarship examines racial and social class inequalities in proximity to environmental hazards in the Philadelphia area. She is the author of From Workshop to Waste Magnet: Environmental Inequality in the Philadelphia Region (Rutgers University Press, 2016).

She teaches sociology courses on environmental justice, environmental movements, disasters, and social class inequality. She is the first person in her family to graduate from college.

Selected Publications:

Books

  • Sicotte, Diane. 2016. From Workshop to Waste Magnet: Environmental Inequality in the Philadelphia Region (Rutgers University Press).

Articles

  • Diane Sicotte, Kelly Joyce and Arielle Hesse. 2022. “Energy Transition: Necessary, Welcome or Dreaded? Unionized U.S. Energy Workers Speak.” Energy Research & Social Science 88: 102511. Published Open Access: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629622000184
  • Diane Sicotte. 2021. “From Western Pennsylvania to the World: Environmental Injustice and the Ethane-to-Plastics Global Production Network,” in Laurent, Eloi (Ed.) Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of the Environment, pp. 159-170.
  • Diane Sicotte and Jessica Seamon. 2021. “Solving the Plastics Problem: Moving the U.S. from Recycling to Reduction.” Society and Natural Resources, 34, 3: 393-402.
  • Diane Sicotte. 2020. “From Cheap Ethane to a Plastic Planet: Regulating an Industrial Global Production Network.” Energy Research & Social Science, 66: 101479.
  • Diane Sicotte and Robert J. Brulle. 2018. “Environmental Justice and Social Movement Theory,” in Handbook of Environmental Justice, edited by Ryan Holifield, Jayajit Chakraborty and Gordon Walker, pp. 25-36. London and New York: Routledge Press.
  • Diane Sicotte and Kelly Joyce. 2017. “Not a ‘Petro Metro:’ Challenging Fossil Fuel Expansion.” Environmental Sociology, 3, 4: 337-347.