Robert Krueger is a human geographer whose scholarship and teaching focus on creating sustainable, socially just, improvements to development projects in the global north and south. His work has taken him around the world. He has worked in countries in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, on issues of economic development and institutional change. His scholarship and teaching challenge conventional notions of economic development, economy-environment relationships, and social change. In his book, Adventures in Sustainable Urbanism (2019, SUNY Press, Krueger, Freytag and Mössner (eds)), Krueger challenges students of sustainable urbanism to visualize new sustainable futures, beyond green technology, energy efficiency, and smart growth. In doing so, his work provides a clear and powerful entry point for reimagining social change.
In addition, to his books, Krueger is the author of dozens of publications on issues of urban sustainability, cities, development, and economy-environment relations. Krueger was also a chapter co-author of the Cities chapter in the Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR). Krueger has guest edited several journal issues, including a recent one on diverse economies for the journal Local Environment. Krueger’s research has been funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Fonds National de la Researche, Luxembourg, the Regional Studies Association, and the Engineering Information Foundation.
Krueger has been at WPI for nearly 20 years. The first half of this career were spent working on community-based research projects in Worcester, Massachusetts and around the world. He was director of the Worcester Community Project Center and has advised award winning projects in Thailand and Namibia. Most recently, Krueger started the Development Design Lab (DDL) to support his work in Ghana and West Africa. The DDL has a wide ranging remit that includes development, environmental, and education concerns in the Eastern Region of Ghana, in particular, and West Africa, in general. The goal of the Lab is to work with individuals and communities to overcome sustainable livelihood challenges.
