Dr. Raja is an Assistant Professor of Public Communication and Advocacy at Loyola University Chicago whose work centers on understanding society’s responses to complex socio-environmental problems. Dr. Raja seeks to advance knowledge and understanding of public engagement with climate change and to contribute to the mitigation of environmental and societal harm. Dr. Raja further uses both qualitative and quantitative methodologies and varied mediums (like virtual reality) to understand how psychological distance—the perception that events, people, experiences, and places are physically or perceptually distant—relates to people’s engagement with climate change.
Dr. Raja has a new book, Rising Against the Tide: Resisting and Repurposing Hegemonic Tools to Promote Environmental Action, to be released in July from Bloomsbury Academic Press.
Dr. Raja’s academic work has also appeared in journals like Climatic Change, Environmental Communication, Frontiers in Psychology, Frontiers in Virtual Reality, and Landscape and Urban Planning, among others. Dr. Raja’s research has also been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Hill, and used by The United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). Dr. Raja has also been awarded prestigious fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF-GRFP), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the World Bank, the Pace Center for Civic Engagement at Princeton University, the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources, the Environmental Grantmakers’ Association (EGA), and the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. Dr. Raja has also worked as an Environmental Grantmaking Fellow at the Solutions Project, as a Research Analyst, and as a Fellow at Climate Central, and as a staffer for a New York State Assembly member.