Nicolas Graham is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia. His research focuses on the political economy of decarbonization and energy transition and seeks to understand the social forces and actors enabling and obstructing effective climate action. He is interested in how incumbent interests resist and shape climate action and in identifying pathways for more rapid, just, and extensive green transition.

My current research on the sociology of climate change focuses on two streams.

1. Climate obstruction. This work addresses organized efforts to prevent, delay, and circumvent robust action on climate change, with a focus on Canada and the United States. My research examines the economic organization and political-cultural influence of the fossil fuel sector, including via political lobbying and the entrenchment of fossil-fuel interests in research and innovation organizations. I also study conservative think-tank and advocacy networks and their role in obstructing climate solutions and policy.
2. Competing projects and frameworks for decarbonization and energy transition. I have contributed to the study of Canada’s environmental movement, examining movement strategy and capacity to influence climate action. My current research at UBC investigates a more elite-driven ‘green growth’ project in Canada, analyzing the policy-planning networks and discourses emerging in support of it. Broadly, it aims to provide insight into the prospects and limits of green growth, which is a dominant framework for addressing climate change and other sustainability challenges.

Books

Graham, Nicolas. 2021. Forces of Production, Climate Change and Canadian Fossil Capitalism. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

Refereed Journal Articles

• Graham, Nicolas. 2025. “Green Dreams or Fossil Schemes? Mapping Canada’s Green Growth Policy-Planning Network.” Energy Research & Social Science 123:104038.
• Graham, Nicolas, and Joanna Robinson. 2024. “Building a New Environmentalism: News Media Access and Framing in Canada’s Environmental Movement.” Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie.
• Graham, Nicolas. 2024. “Think Tanks and Climate Obstruction: Atlas Affiliates in Canada.” Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie 61(2):110–30.
• Graham, Nicolas, Bryan Evans and David Chen. 2023. “Canada’s Lobbying Industry: Business and Public Interest Advocacy from Harper to Trudeau.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 56(4): 975-998.
• Neubauer, Robert, Nicolas Graham and Helena Krobath. 2023. “Defending ‘Canadian Energy’: Connective Leadership and Extractive Populism on Canadian Facebook.” Environmental Communication 17(6): 634-652.
• Graham, Nicolas. 2023. “Planning and the Ecosocialist Mode of Cooperation.” Monthly Review 75(3): 126-141.
• Neubauer, Robert and Nicolas Graham. 2021. “Fuelling the Subsidized Public: Mapping the Flow of Extractivist Content on Facebook.” Canadian Journal of Communication 46(4): 905-938.
• Carroll, William K., Nicolas Graham and Mark Shakespeare. 2021. “Mapping the Environmental Field: Networks of Foundations, ENGOs and Think Tanks.” Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie 58(3): 284-305.
• Graham, Nicolas. 2020. “Fossil Knowledge Networks: Science, Ecology and the “Greening” of Carbon Extractive Development.” Studies in Political Economy 101(2): 93-113.
• Carroll, William K., Nicolas Graham and Mark Shakespeare. 2020. “Foundations, ENGOs, Clean-Growth Networks and the Integral State.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 45(2): 109-142.
• Graham, Nicolas, William K. Carroll and David Chen. 2020. “Carbon Capital’s Political Reach: A Network Analysis of Federal Lobbying by the Fossil Fuel Sector from Harper to Trudeau.” Canadian Political Science Review 14(1): 1-31.
• Graham, Nicolas. 2019. “Canadian Fossil Capitalism, Corporate Strategy and Post-Carbon Futures.” Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie 56(2): 224-250.
• Carroll, William K., Nicolas Graham, Michael Lang, Zoë Yunker, and Kevin McCartney. 2018. “The Corporate Elite and the Architecture of Climate Change Denial: A Network Analysis of Carbon Capital’s Reach into Civil Society.” Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie 55(3): 425–50.
• Graham, Nicolas. 2017. “State-Capital Nexus and the Making of BC Shale and Liquefied Natural Gas.” BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly (194): 11–38.
• Graham, Nicolas. 2015. “Ecological Forces of Production.” Capitalism Nature Socialism (26)2: 76-91.

Book Chapters

• Graham, Nicolas. 2024. “Consuming Fossil Fuels.” Pp. 50–64 in Consuming the Environment, edited by M. Hird. London: Routledge.
• Graham, Nicolas and William K. Carroll. 2022. “Climate Breakdown: From Fossil Capitalism to Climate Capitalism (and Beyond?).” Pp. 25-46 in Capital and Politics: Socialist Register 2023, edited by G. Albo, N. Aschoff and A. Saad-Filho. London: Merlin Press.
• Daub, Shannon, Chuka Ejeckam, Nicolas Graham and Zoe Yunker. 2022. “Doing Things Better Together: Industry Capture of Climate Policy in BC.” Pp. 249- 271 in Regime of Obstruction: How Corporate Power Blocks Energy Democracy, edited by W. Carroll. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press.
• Carroll, William K., Nicolas Graham and Zoe Yunker. 2018. “Carbon Capital and Corporate Influence: Mapping Elite Networks of Corporations, Universities and Research Institutes.” Pp. 58–73 in Corporatizing Canada: Making Business out of Public Service, edited by J. Brownlee, C. Hurl, and K. Walby. Toronto: Between the Lines.

Research Reports

• Plehwe, D., Goldenbaum, M., Ramanujam, M., McKie, R., Moreno, J., Ekberg, K., Hall, G., Araldi,
  L., Walker, J., Brulle, R., Neujeffski, M., Graham, N., and Hrubes, M. 2021. The Mises Network and Climate Policy. Providence RI: The Climate Social Science Network.
• Graham, Nicolas, William K. Carroll and David Chen. 2019. Big Oil’s Political Reach: Mapping Fossil Fuel Lobbying from Harper to Trudeau. Vancouver: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
• Graham, Nicolas, Shannon Daub and William K. Carroll. 2017. Mapping Political Influence: Political Donations and Lobbying by the Fossil Fuel Industry in BC. Vancouver: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Canadian Review of Sociology Best Article 2022
Canadian Review of Sociology Best Article 2020
Canadian Sociological Association – Outstanding Graduating Student Award (Uvic PhD)
BC Studies Journal Prize (Article of the Year 2017)