Paul Almeida is a Professor of Sociology and Environmental Systems at the University of California, Merced. Almeida’s research centers on the efficacy of collective action at the local, national and global levels of social and political life.  He has empirically examined the timing, distribution, and outcomes of dozens of large-scale campaigns whereby ordinary people and excluded social groups mobilized to protect themselves from the loss of vital necessities such as environmental quality, health care, pensions, water services/utilities, and other socio-economic rights. 

His recent work focuses on locally-based challenges and responses to climate change. Since 2018, he has implemented representative surveys with partner groups in two dozen towns and cities throughout the San Joaquin Valley on community needs and/or climate action. 

Almeida is a founding member of the UC Merced Community and Labor Center. He is an affiliate of Brown University's Climate Social Science Network (CSSN) and participates in the Valley Plan on Climate Investments, Jobs, and Technologies. He sits on the Climate Change steering committee of the University of California's Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) and on the Decarbonization Board of UC Merced. He volunteers as a Faculty Mentor for the UC-Mexico Climate Research Program and the UC Alianza MX Climate Ambassadors Initiative. Almeida also serves as the Coordinating Editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Climate Action.

His articles have appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, American Behavioral Scientist, Annual Review of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Problems, Mobilization, npj Climate Action, and other scholarly outlets.

Almeida’s books include: Collective Resistance to Neoliberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2022; with Amalia Pérez Martín); Global Struggles and Social Change (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020; with Chris Chase-Dunn); Social Movements: The Structure of Collective Mobilization (University of California Press, 2019); Mobilizing Democracy: Globalization and Citizen Protest (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014); Waves of Protest: Popular Struggle in El Salvador, 1925-2005 (University of Minnesota Press, 2008); Handbook of Social Movements across Latin America (co-edited with Allen Cordero, 2015); and Latin American Social Movements: Globalization, Democratization and Transnational Networks (co-edited with Hank Johnston, 2006). 

He teaches courses on climate change and society, social movements, political sociology, environmental sociology, climate justice, globalization, sociological theory, and organizational behavior.