Sophia Kalantzakos

Sophia Kalantzakos is a Global Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Public Policy in the Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Scholars Program, New York University Abu Dhabi. Her work examines how climate change, technological transformation, resource competition, and demographic shifts are reshaping global power and why contemporary governance systems are structurally unprepared for the world they have produced.

Kalantzakos research focuses on resources and power, with particular attention to critical minerals, supply chains, and the geopolitical consequences of the green and digital transitions. She analyzes how decarbonization, the fourth industrial revolution, and the reconfiguration of global production are accelerating new alignments between the United States, China, Europe, the Global South, and the Gulf. Rather than treating these developments as technical or sectoral challenges, her work situates them within a broader political economy of industrial power, strategic rivalry, and institutional adaptation.

Kalantzakos’ publications include Critical Minerals, the Climate Crisis and the Tech-Imperium, editor (Springer 2023),  China and the Geopolitics of Rare Earths (Oxford University Press, 2018; rev.2021) translated in Italian Terre Rare: La Cina e la geopolitica dei minerali strategici (Bocconi University Press, 2021; revised and updated, 2025), Hungarian, and Russian, and The EU, US, and China Tackling Climate Change: Policies and Alliances for the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2017).