Maurie Cohen
Professor, Humanities | New Jersey Institute of Technology
Newark, NJ, UNITED STATES
Maurie's research is centered in the field of environmental/sustainability social science
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Biography
Dr. Maurie Cohen is a professor in the Department of Humanities at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and director of its Science, Technology and Society program. He is a co-founder and executive board member of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI), an international knowledge network comprising academics, policy makers and NGO representatives working at the interface of material consumption, sustainable systems innovation and economic transition (http://www.scorai.org). Dr. Cohen is also the Editor of Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy, an open-access journal dedicated to the wide dissemination of academic research and professional insights on sustainability science and studies (http://sspp.proquest.com).
Dr. Cohen´s books include Putting Sustainability into Practice: Applications and Advances in Research on Sustainable Consumption (with Emily Huddart Kennedy and Naomi Krogman); Innovations in Sustainable Consumption: New Economics, Socio-technical Transitions, and Social Practices (with Halina Szejnwald Brown and Philip Vergragt); Exploring Sustainable Consumption: Environmental Policy and the Social Sciences (with Joseph Murphy); Risk in the Modern Age: Social Theory, Science, and Environmental Decision Making; and The Exxon Valdez Disaster: Readings on a Social Problem (with J. Steven Picou and Duane Gill). He holds a master´s degree in urban and regional planning from Columbia University (1987) and a PhD in regional science from the University of Pennsylvania (1993).
See his personal website at http://mauriecohen.net.
Areas of Expertise (6)
Socio-Technical Transition Management
Sustainable Consumption
Sustainability Science
Environmental Social Science
Environmental Policy
Alternative Mobility Futures
Education (3)
University of Pennsylvania: Ph.D., Regional Science 1993
Columbia University in New York City: M.S., Science, Urban and Regional Planning 1987
New York University: B.S., Science, Marketing 1984
Links (4)
Media Appearances (4)
The Stanley craze: How a reusable cup became the latest symbol of overconsumption
The 19th online
2024-01-12
From exclusive ‘color drops’ to unboxings, the hype over the popular tumblers shows how influencer culture is driving waste on a planet with finite resources.
How to hack McMansions
Archinect News online
2020-03-13
Citing research published in the journal Housing, Theory & Society by Maurie Cohen, a professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology, Peters argues that "if the world used resources sustainably and equitably, the average home for a single person would be no larger than 215 square feet, and a four-person family would live in no more than 860 square feet."
How much do our oversized McMansions need to shrink to be sustainable?
Fast Company online
2020-03-11
“New construction of homes keeps getting bigger and bigger,” says Maurie Cohen, a professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology and author of a new paper reporting these conclusions, published in the journal Housing, Theory & Society. “It drops off during periods of recession, but then it recovers. And this was sort of part of an effort of trying to begin a discussion about developing a new housing paradigm that’s not so much focused on ‘bigger is better.'”
The end of the road for motormania
NewScientist online
2011-08-10
Phil Goodwin at the University of the West of England in Bristol says the same applies to the UK, where young people are the most prominent in dropping out of the great car society. Maurie Cohen, an environmental scientist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, says “Gen Y-ers are quite cool to the automobile.” The modern James Dean is a rebel without a car.
Research Focus (1)
The Intersection of environmental social science, sustainability science, and environmental policy
My research is located at the intersection of environmental social science, sustainability science, and environmental policy. Primary areas of activity focus on sustainable consumption, alternative mobility futures, and socio-technical transition management, I serve as the Editor the journal Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy
Articles (6)
COVID-19 Can Help Wealthier Nations Prepare for a Sustainability Transition
Future EarthMaurie Cohen, Joseph Sarkis, Patrick Schröder, Magnus Bengtsson, Steven McGreevy and Paul Dewick
2020 COVID-19 could inadvertently contribute to meaningful progress toward meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and several of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Climate-governance entrepreneurship, higher-order learning, and sustainable consumption: the case of the state of Oregon, United States
Climate Policy2019 The ongoing devolution of climate policy-making to sub-national levels has prompted growing interest in policy entrepreneurship by individuals who are politically and technically creative and institutionally resourceful.
Degrowth within – Aligning circular economy and strong sustainability narratives
Resources, Conservation and Recycling2019 This perspective calls for building greater understanding of overlapping and conflicting considerations between the sustainability principles that inform current conceptions of circular economy and degrowth.
Reforming local public finance to reduce resource consumption: the sustainability case for graduated property taxation
Sustainability Science2019 The customary mode of flat rate-property taxation used in the United States and many other Anglospheric countries encourages the consumption of ever greater volumes of energy and materials by relatively affluent households and exacerbates social inequalities. Transition from an invariable tax rate on residential real estate to a graduated schedule could enhance local sustainability by ameliorating the trend toward larger houses and associated increases in resource appropriation.
A novel Ruminococcus gnavus clade enriched in inflammatory bowel disease patients
Genome Medicine2017 Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is characterized by chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract that is associated with changes in the gut microbiome. Here, we sought to identify strain-specific functional correlates with IBD outcomes. We performed metagenomic sequencing of monthly stool samples from 20 IBD patients and 12 controls (266 total samples).
Institutionalization processes in transformative social innovation: Capture dynamics in the social solidarity economy and basic income initiatives
Social Change and the Coming of Post-Consumer Society2017 Researchers, policy actors, and practitioners have begun to acutely apprehend the current combination of deeply rooted crises concerning the economy, ecology, and other domains. Scholars argue that structural, multi-dimensional, and sustainabilityoriented transitions are needed to address persistent and systemic challenges (Grin et al., 2010; Jackson, 2010), or what have been called “wicked problems”(Brown et al., 2010).
Social