William San Martín (He/Him/El) is Assistant Professor of Global Environmental Science, Technology, and Governance in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 

He is also a Scholar affiliated with the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN) at Brown University and a Research Fellow at the Earth Systems Governance Project at Utrecht University.

William is an interdisciplinary scholar of global environmental science and governance. His work examines environmental justice and inequalities in Latin America and the Global South through the lenses of knowledge, technology, and policy.

William received a B.A. and M.A. from the Universidad Católica de Chile and a Ph.D. from the University of California Davis. He is a former Fullbright Scholar and has held postdoctoral fellowships in the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program and the History Section at MIT, as well as the Rachel Carson Center for Environment & Society.

Throughout his research and work with international organizations, William is interested in the multiple forms that issues of rights, justice, and democracy take place in the formation of global environmental issues. As an interdisciplinary historian and social scientist, William has studied a broad range of historical and contemporary issues, including race and legal inequalities, slavery, colonialism, agricultural development, US-Latin America relations, human-wildlife conflicts, and environmental change and policy. Today, he integrates many discussions from colonial, postcolonial, and development studies into his scholarship, aiming to shed light on often overlooked aspects in modern environmental governance debates, such as political economy, inequalities, and colonialism.

William's current research project examines socio-ecological conflicts and knowledge-policy responses emerging from changes in the global nitrogen cycle resulting from the increasing use of synthetic fertilizers, among other sources, since the 1950s. He is particularly interested in understanding the imbalance of knowledge in global nitrogen governance, focusing on expertise, sustainable development policy, and inequalities in the Global South—as processes linked to lasting issues of (under)development and colonialism.  

Born and raised in Chile, William has vast experience in policy-oriented research and building collaborations with international organizations and communities. He is currently a Co-PI of the NSF-funded grant Accelerating Coordination across Research and Policy Networks to Halve Nitrogen Waste (iN-Net) ($1.49 million, Award 2412593). The project works with international scientific networks and policymakers in South Asia, Africa, Latin America, the US, and Europe, as well as with intergovernmental organizations, including the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) - Nitrogen Working Group, a forum of 80+ government representatives created in 2019 to explore the challenges of governing nitrogen pollution and developing national and international policy instruments. By supporting international coordination across research and policy, the project aims to contribute to advancing the mandates of recent UN Resolutions on Sustainable Nitrogen Management and advancing the ambitious goal of halving nitrogen waste by 2030.  William oversees the governance area of the project and leads an international, interdisciplinary working group dedicated to identifying knowledge gaps, social barriers, and policy challenges. The working group's primary goal is to develop research-action agendas to aid UN Member States and research communities in promoting sustainable nitrogen management practices while keeping close attention to disparities in current research capacities and governance tools, as well as the distinct needs and agendas across the Global North and South. 

William is also a Co-PI of the NSF's Using the Rules of Life to Address Societal Challenges Grant: Co-Producing Knowledge, Biotechnologies and Practices to Enhance Biological Nitrogen Fixation for Sustainable Agriculture ($2.67 million, Award 2319430). Working with small-scale farmers, agricultural researchers, extensionists, soil scientists, and biochemists in the United States and Chile, the project uses participatory research-action methodologies to co-produce knowledge and technologies to enhance biological nitrogen fixation and diminish fertilizer's harmful social and environmental effects. The project brings William's expertise on global environmental governance to a local and national level to think about how participatory methodologies can support ongoing efforts in agroecological research and practice by deliberatively working with local researchers, stakeholders, and Indigenous and traditional agricultural practices. Working with the Postdoctoral Researcher Marcela Cely-Santos, William leads the co-production component of the project to scrutinize the role of co-production methodologies in agroecological research and practice, helping reduce dependency on synthetic fertilizers, and informing debates about knowledge co-production in STS, environmental studies, and sustainability sciences.

William is co-editor, along with Emily O'Gorman, Mark Carey, and Sandra Swart, of the Routledge Handbook of Environmental History (Routledge, 2023), and author of various peer-reviewed articles and book chapters published in fields including history of science and technology, political ecology, environmental studies, sustainable development, and Latin American studies. He currently curates the collections "Technology and Expertise" and "Histories across Species" for Arcadia, the online, peer-reviewed journal of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society.

William is a contributing author to Chapter 29 (“A Governance Framework for Better Nitrogen Management”) of the International Nitrogen Assessment (INA), the first global assessment addressing issues at the intersection of nitrogen science and governance. Set for publication in 2024, INA is sponsored by UNEP, and aims to provide policy and scientific advice to advance sustainable nitrogen practices globally. William is also a Steering Council Member for the North American Chapter of the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI), the primary scientific organization working on building partnerships and collaborations to assess local, regional, and global impacts of nitrogen pollution. He is also currently chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leadership Committee of the American Society for Environmental History, a former elected member of the Association for Environmental Studies & Sciences' Nominations Committee, and an affiliated researcher at NUDISUR, an international network of scholars dedicated to decolonial approaches to knowledge production and participatory, community-engaged research.

At WPI,  he is an affiliated faculty with the MS Community Climate Adaptation, the International & Global Studies, and the Great Problems Seminar Programs, and a Steering Committee Member of WPI's Latin American & Caribbean Studies Initiative. He has served as a faculty advisor for Interactive Qualifying Projects working with local organizations at the intersection of sustainable development, environmental conservation, and climate resilience at WPI's Costa Rica - Monteverde and Cuenca - Ecuador Project Centers. 

Visit Digital WPI to view student projects and research advised by Professor San Martín
For courses taught at WPI and MIT, visit Professor San Martín’s personal website