Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton is a PhD candidate in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. His research centers on the social, political, and environmental implications of critical minerals for energy transitions, with a focus on China and Latin America. He is also affiliated with the Climate Policy Lab in The Fletcher School at Tufts University. Before joining UC Berkeley, he served as an Assistant Researcher for the Climate Policy Lab. There, he led research on critical minerals and energy transitions, with a focus on China, Latin America, and Africa. Collaborating with in-country climate policy experts and government officials, he also undertook climate policy gap analyses of Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
Nathaniel completed master’s studies as a Marshall Scholar at the universities of Cambridge (MPhil Geographical Research) and Oxford (MSt Critical Translation), and undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley (BS Environmental Science, Policy, and Management). From 2021–2022, he served as a Blakemore Freeman Fellow in National Taiwan University’s International Chinese Language Program. Other relevant experiences include collaboration with Dr. Elia Apostolopoulou, Prince of Wales Global Sustainability Fellow at the University of Cambridge, on an edited volume on the social and environmental impacts of China’s Belt and Road Initiative; research assistance at the California-China Climate Institute; coding for the Oxford Coronavirus Government Response Tracker; and work as an environmental journalist. His writings have appeared in the Journal of Rural Studies, Land Use Policy, Orion, and elsewhere.
Nathaniel is intermediate-advanced in Mandarin Chinese (HSK 5) and Spanish.
