Nicole Fabricant

Nicole Fabricant

My Biography

Nicole Fabricant is Professor of Anthropology at Towson University in Maryland. She teaches courses on resource extraction, environmental justice, and the climate crisis. Her most recent book, Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore (University of California Press 2022) looks at the cumulative impacts of industrial toxic facilities in South Baltimore, Maryland. The book (through an activist anthropological lens) follows a dynamic and creative group of high school students who fight back against race- and class-based health disparities associated with fossil fuel production and distribution. Fighting to Breathe received the 2024 APLA book prize for best critical ethnography in political anthropology.

Her new research examines the political economy of coal (from extraction to export). She also documents  political campaigns of solidarity and resistance across the entire supply chain from Appalachia to Baltimore as activists’ organize for a Just Transition from coal. She is currently working on a manuscript on the Need for the Re-nationalization and Electrification of Rail.