Grete Gansauer
Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources
Assistant Professor, Sustainable Communities
Education
Ph.D. Summa Cum Laude, Ecology and Environmental Sciences (Human Geography), Montana State University (2024)
B.S., Forestry, Colorado State University (2012)
Background and Expertise
Grete Gansauer is an economic geographer and interdisciplinary public policy researcher focused on regional development, place-based policy, and the local state in peripheral regions and ‘left behind’ places. Her interest in rural community development sprouted while leading NGO programs and convening collaborative governance forums on environmental issues in Western Montana timber and mining communities in her early career. Today, her research maintains a focus on rural areas and natural resource production. Using qualitative policy analysis methods and place-based case studies, her research examines regional development and sustainability challenges amidst spatial inequality, and how central policies ‘touch down’ at the regional level. She has held fellowships and visiting appointments with the US Department of Agriculture, National Academies of Sciences in Washington DC, and University of Cambridge, leading her to collaborate on research in the US, UK and Finland. Currently, she is a board member of the Regional Studies Association, and she co-organizes EdgeNet, a global research network on peripheral regions and why they matter.
Selected Publications
Gansauer, G., Lilius, J. Adams, R-M. (In Press). Affective politics and neoliberal subjectivities in ‘left behind’ places: Counter-narrating regional decline within/from Finland’s ‘Capital of Pessimism.’ Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space
Gansauer, G. (2024). For growth or equity: A taxonomy of ‘Bidenomics’ place-based policies and implications for US regional inequality. Regional Studies, 1-15.
Gansauer, G., Haggerty, J. H., Smith, K. K., Haggerty, M. N., & Roemer, K. F. (2024). Can infrastructure help ‘left behind’ places ‘catch up?’ Theorizing the role of built infrastructure in regional development. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 17(2), 393-406.
Gansauer, G., & Westwood, A. (2024). Transatlantic lessons from Bidenomics place-based policies: opportunities and limits for addressing regional inequality. Contemporary Social Science, 1-18.
Gansauer, G., & Haggerty, J. (2024). Beyond city limits: infrastructural regionalism in rural Montana, USA. Territory, Politics, Governance, 12(6), 746-764.
Gansauer, G., Haggerty, J., & Dunn, J. (2023). Public water system governance in rural Montana, USA: a ‘slow drip’ on community resilience. Society & Natural Resources, 36(10), 1257-1276.
Haggerty, J. H., Dunn, J., Gansauer, G., Ewing, S., & Metcalf, E. (2021). Social memory and infrastructure governance: a century in the life of a rural drinking water system. Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability, 1(3), 035004.
See Grete Gansauer's Google Scholar page here.
