Robert Hobbins

Robert Hobbins is an urban sustainability scientist and knowledge architect whose research objective is to build more inclusive, equitable, and resilient cities given today’s rapidly changing environmental conditions. We are in desperate need of radical transformations and change agents to meet the demands of today’s complex and contested sustainability challenges. Robert’s research centers on knowledge co-production as a key intervention in the knowledge-implementation cycle to build the capacities of students, researchers, government officials, and community leaders to co-produce new knowledge and solutions to guide urban sustainability transformations as empowered agents of change. He has a PhD in Sustainability from Arizona State University and worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Georgia State University’s Urban Studies Institute in Atlanta, GA where he co-led the Sustainable Futures Lab.

During his PhD, Robert served as the Graduate Fellow for the Transitions and Implementations Working Group of the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network where he helped city leaders from across the U.S. and Latin America envision more desirable urban futures, visualize and communicate those visions, and build the transformative capacities necessary to implement them. For instance, he has assisted Radical Partner’s 100 Great Ideas campaign on Sustainability and Resilience in Miami and assists the Alianza por la Cuenca del río Piedras in San Juan (Puerto Rico) in local capacity-building efforts to implement an alternative vision for integrated flood management and mitigation using nature-based solutions. He helped co-found the Future Cities Podcast – an early-career led podcast to mobilize knowledge and research on urban resilience – and currently hosts the Atlanta Transformative Leaders Series that brings together Atlanta-based individuals and organizations to share knowledge, resources, and collaborate on innovative sustainability projects. Among his current research initiatives, Robert is integrating over a decade of STEM education experience with his urban sustainability scholarship to redesign undergraduate and graduate student education to prepare the next generation of urban sustainability scholars.

Robert has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on knowledge co-production and knowledge systems, sustainability transformations, anticipatory governance, flood risk, and urban resilience. Prior to his scholarly career as an urban sustainability scientist, Robert was a K-12 educator. In 2010, he was awarded the Arizona Teacher of the Year award at the Governor’s Celebration of Innovation by the Arizona Technology Council and former Governor Jan Brewer. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for Sonoran Schools.