Professor Kathleen (Kate) Sullivan, Ph.D., is a sociocultural anthropologist specializing in legal and political anthropology. She was awarded her Ph.D. in Anthropology from University of California Santa Barbara in December 2004 and joined the faculty of Anthropology at California State University Los Angeles as an Assistant Professor in September 2005.
Research Interests
Democratic and bureaucratic governance; legal and political anthropology; ocean law, policy, public planning processes; ocean and coastal conservation and development, including offshore wind energy, wild capture and aquaculture fisheries; media and big data in coastal and oceans governance and policy; Pacific Coast of North America (continental U.S. and British Columbia), southern Chile.
Dr. Sullivan’s research focuses on ocean and coastal zone governance, the political ecology of changing ocean uses, and public processes. She explores democratic and technocratic forms of governance, and knowledge-sharing practices in face-to-face and mediated venues, where emerging forms of marine spatial planning and management, especially those linked with digital knowledge-sharing technologies, are of particular importance. Dr. Sullivan’s work has followed the many changes in ocean governance and development over several decades. Her ethnographic research began by investigating the political economy and state regulation of small scale, owner-operator family commercial fishing boats in Texas. She went on to examine the environmental and economic conflicts over the development of industrialized salmon aquaculture in British Columbia and southern Chile. Then her focus shifted to emerging integrated marine spatial planning exercises along the West Coast of the US. Her current research includes studying knowledge-sharing practices among ocean scientists and technologists, as they collect, curate, and represent ocean scientific data. This work led her to investigate the public processes that have emerged focused on the potential development of industrialized offshore wind energy infrastructure in West Coast oceans, particularly in Oregon. She has written about the politics and governance of freshwater systems in the western US. She currently conducts ethnographic research on the West Coast of the US, and has conducted ethnographic research in British Columbia, southern Chile, and Galveston Bay, Texas, on the politics of ocean uses. Dr. Sullivan’s ethnographic investigations into governance practices, particularly as manifested in quotidian social practices and relationships, contribute to a growing body of ethnographic studies that critically examines the constitutive relations of power in environmental, economic, and infrastructure politics.
A list of her publications can be found at: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-6180-2081
Teaching
Dr. Sullivan ran the Anthropology Media Lab for 21 years, where her students made short ethnographic films exploring anthropological themes. Her students won thirteen 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place awards at the CSULA Golden Eagle Film Festival, and a 1st place in the West Hollywood Video Contest. Other highlights include the production and public screening of a 43-minute documentary "Making of the Houseguest from Xinjiang," as well as "Alamitos Bay Through Time," a digital StoryMap on public exhibit in the 'Water Changes Everything Exhibition' at the Historical Society of Long Beach, July 2019-June 2020. Both projects were produced with her students. Professor Sullivan taught a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate classes in sociocultural and linguistic anthropology, including research methods.
Service Contributions
Dr. Sullivan served as a campus Faculty Representative for CSU Council on Ocean Affairs, Science & Technology (COAST) Fall 2022-Spring 2026. Dr. Sullivan has contributed to the International Coastal Atlas Network (ICAN) workshop organizing committees since 2017. ICAN is a programme activity of IODE-International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange, IOC-Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, UNESCO. Dr. Sullivan served as elected Treasurer for the Association for Legal and Political Anthropology, Section of the American Anthropological Association, Fall 2007-2021 and on the Editorial Board of PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, peer-reviewed journal of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology, Fall 2015-2021. Dr. Sullivan was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California Berkeley, 2013-2014, and returns to the Center for the Study of Law and Society, 2026-2027, again as a Visiting Scholar.
Selected Publications
Sullivan, Kathleen M. and James H. McDonald (editors) (2021) Public Lands in the Western US: Place and Politics in the Clash between Public and Private. Pp. 220. Lexington Press, The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.
Sullivan, Kathleen M. and Sayd Randle (Special Section editors, Casey Walsh and Simon Batterbury, journal editors) (2024) 'Water in Short Supply,' Special Section, Journal of Political Ecology, 31(1).
Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters
Sullivan, Kathleen M. (forthcoming) Extracting Wind, Scaling the Ocean. Journal of Legal Anthropology 9(2).
Sullivan, Kathleen M. (2024) Governing Water in the US West: Introduction to 'Water in Short Supply,' Special Section. Journal of Political Ecology 31(1), 972-993.
Gilbane, Lisa, Richard F. Ambrose, Jennifer L. Burnaford, Mary Elaine Helix, C. Melissa Miner, Steven Murray, Kathleen M. Sullivan, and Stephen G. Whitaker (2022) Long-term Sustainability of Ecological Monitoring: Perspectives from the Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network. In Guillermo Auad and Francis K. Weise (eds.), Partnerships in Marine Research: Case Studies, Lessons Learned, and Policy Implications. Pp. 109-129. Elsevier.
Sullivan, Kathleen M and James H. McDonald (2021) Public Lands through the Prism of Senses of Place. In Kathleen M. Sullivan and James McDonald (eds.), Public Lands in the Western US: Place and Politics in the Clash between Public and Private. Pp. 11-31. Lexington Press, The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.
Sullivan, Kathleen M. (2020) Documenting Sea Change: Ocean data technologies, sciences, and governance. Environment and Society: Advances in Research 11(2020), 81-99.
Sullivan, Kathleen M. (2019) Troubled Currents and the Contentious Moral Orderings of Drakes Estero. In Sandra Brunnegger (ed.), Everyday Justice: Law, Ethnography, Injustice. Pp. 135-160. Cambridge University Press.
Sullivan, Kathleen M. (2019) Governing Futures: Oceanic Possibilities, Uncertainties, and Expertise. Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 80:85-111.
Sullivan, Kathleen M. (2016) Heterotopic Oceans in Southern Chile: Heritage, fisheries, and marine conservation. Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 11(1): 46-69.
Email: [email protected]