Meet Mark Ortiz, Presidential Postdoctoral Scholar and upcoming Assistant Professor of Geography.
As a geographer, Ortiz’s research spans youth politics, social movement studies, storytelling methods, and climate justice approaches. Much of his postdoctoral work emphasizes new research directions of climate advocacy.
Ortiz has been involved in numerous youth and integrational climate justice organizations. As a PhD student at UNC-Chapel Hill, he was involved as a Board Member of the North Carolina Climate Justice Collective. He has also worked with international organizations including CliMates, the YOUNGO youth constituency active, and the Climate Reality Project.
His PhD work examined transnational youth climate activism, specifically how youth activists engage in historically adult-dominated political institutions, how youth utilize digital media to generate political movements, and how such movements conceptualize intergenerational ethics. His work also includes humor in activism, youth in climate fiction, and media coverage. Ortiz’s current research project traces what he thinks of as the ‘invention of intergenerational politics’ across multilateral political institutions, specifically the United Nations system. He recently received a Young Researchers’ Network Fellowship for this work. Ortiz also represented Penn State at the UN Climate Change Conference in December of 2023. He co-organized and spoke at two panel discussions and participated as a speaker in 2 additional events.
Students interested in research on climate change, the environment, and sustainability are welcome to get involved in Mark Ortiz’s lab, Global Youth Storytelling and Research (GYSRL). Information can be found here, or you can reach out to Mark directly at mark.ortiz@psu.edu.
