David Konisky’s research and teaching focuses on U.S. environmental policy and politics, with emphasis on environmental and energy justice, regulation, federalism, and public attitudes. Konisky is a founding co-director of the Energy Justice Lab, a research collaboration between Indiana University and the University of Pennsylvania to explore, measure, and improve the equity and justice dimensions of society’s ongoing energy transition.
He has authored or edited seven books, including most recently, Power Lines: The Human Costs of American Energy in Transition (University of Chicago Press, with Sanya Carley. Among his other books, include: Fifty Years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Progress, Retrenchment and Opportunities (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020, with Jim Barnes and John D. Graham), Failed Promises: Evaluating the Federal Government's Response to Environmental Justice (MIT Press, 2015), and Cheap and Clean: How Americans Think about Energy in the Age of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2014, with Steve Ansolabehere).
His research has been published in various journals, including the American Journal of Political Science, Climatic Change, Environmental Research Letters, Global Environmental Change, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Journal of Politics, Nature Energy, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Public Opinion Quarterly. He has been an editor of the journal Environmental Politics since 2021 and became in editor-in-chief in 2024.
Konisky’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Energy, and the Russell Sage Foundatio.
Konisky earned his Ph.D. in political science from MIT. He also holds two master’s degrees from Yale University: one in environmental management and one in international relations. At the undergraduate level, he studied history and environmental studies at Washington University in St. Louis.
