Faculty Profiles

Ptak, T. W. (2025). Repositioning energy geographies in a time of crisis: Arguments from a subdiscipline on the margins of geography. Dialogues in Human Geography. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1177/20438206251316025

Ptak, T. W. (2024). Coupling Fire and Energy in the Anthropocene: Deploying Scale to Analyze Vulnerability from Forced Electrical Outages in Butte County, California. Energy Research and Social Science, (112). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2024.103519

Ptak, T. W. (2024). Borders, Boundaries, and Borderlands. In The Encyclopedia of Human Geography (pp. 1–8). Springer Nature. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-031-25900-5_9-1

Ptak, T. W. (2024). Miner threat: Premature death to prefigurative politics for unearthing solar-grade silica. Human Geography, 1–14. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/19427786241258717

Walther, O., Szary, A.-L., Brambilla, C., Brunet-Jailly, E., Klatt, M., Laine, J., … Radil, S. (2023). Border Studies at 45. Political Geography, 104. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.102909

Ptak, T. W., Crootof, A., Harlan, T., & Kelly, S. (2022). Critically analyzing the purported global “boom” in small hydropower development through spatial and temporal analysis. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 163. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2022.112490

Ptak, T. W., & Radil, S. (2022). Democratic Divergence and the Landscape of Community Solar in the United States. In Democratizing Energy, Insecurities, Risks, Transitions. Elsevier. Retrieved from https://www.elsevier.com/books/energy-democracies-for-sustainable-futures/nadesan/978-0-12-822796-1

Mace, R. E., Thompson, C., & Ptak, T. (2022). Individual Action Can Make A BIG Difference In Tackling Climate Change (with Dr. Thomas Ptak). Fahrenheit 140 podcast (Episode 005). Anchor by Spotify. Retrieved from https://anchor.fm/meadows-center/episodes/Individual-Action-Can-Make-A-BIG-Difference-In-Tackling-Climate-Change-e1pmupj

Crootof, A., Shrestha, R., Albrecht, T., Ptak, T. W., & Scott, C. A. (2021). Sacrificing the local to support the national: Politics, sustainability, and governance in Nepal’s hydropower paradox. Energy Research and Social Science, 80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102206

Ptak, T. W. (2021). Small Hydropower for Electricity and Modernity: Impacts on the Everyday Lives of Minority Communities in Yunnan’s Nu River Valley. In The Political Economy of Hydropower in Southwest China and beyond. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59361-2

Nagel, A. C., & Ptak, T. W. (2021). Approaching obsolescence? A multi-criteria analysis of high-risk dams in the United States Pacific Northwest. International Journal of Water Resources Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2020.1856050

Haltinner, K., Sarathchandra, D., & Ptak, T. W. (2021). How Believing That Climate Change Is a Conspiracy Affects Skeptics’ Environmental Attitudes. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 63(3), 25–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/00139157.2021.1898900

Ptak, T. W., & Konrad, V. (2021). “Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones”: How Borders, Energy Development and Ongoing Experimentation Shape the Dynamic Transformation of Yunnan Province. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 36(5), 765–789. https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2021.1924074

Abatzoglou, J. T., Smith, C. M., Swain, D. L., Ptak, T. W., & Kolden, C. A. (2020). Population exposure to pre-emptive de-energization aimed at averting wildfires in Northern California. Environmental Research Letters, 15(9). https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aba135

Radil, S. M., Castan Pinos, J., & Ptak, T. W. (2020). Borders resurgent: towards a post-Covid-19 global border regime? Space and Polity, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2020.1773254

Ptak, T. W., Laine, J. P., Hu, Z., Liu, Y., Konrad, V., & van der Velde, M. (2020). Understanding borders through dynamic processes: capturing relational motion from south-west China’s radiation centre. Territory, Politics, Governance. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2020.1764861

Ptak, T. W. (2019). Towards an ethnography of small hydropower in China: Rural electrification, socioeconomic development and furtive hydroscapes. Energy Research and Social Science, 48, 116–130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.09.010

Ptak, T. W. (2019). Southwest China. In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies. Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0304

Ptak, T. W. (2019). Visual Expressions of the State: Borders and Boundary Markers in a Dynamic China and Asia. In Handbook of the Changing World Language Map. Springer. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_71-1

Ptak, T. W., Nagel, A., Radil, S. M., & Phayre, D. (2018). Rethinking community: Analyzing the landscape of community solar through the community-place nexus. Electricity Journal, 31(10), 46–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tej.2018.11.006

Ptak, T. W. (2017). Considering multiple Chinas in the shifting regional geopolitics of Mekong river dams. Political Geography, 58, 136–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2016.09.007

Ptak, T. W. (2016, May). Vietnamese-Chinese Relationships at the Borderlands: Trade, Tourism and Cultural Politics. Journal of Borderland Studies. Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2016.1153942

Ptak, T. W., & Hommel, D. (2016). The trans-political nature of Southwest China’s energy conduit, Yunnan Province. Geopolitics, 21(3), 556–578. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2015.1114471

Ptak, T. W. (2014). Dams and Development: Understanding Hydropower in Far Western Yunnan Province. Focus on Geography, 57(2), 43–53. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/foge.12028