Ph.D., University of Washington (2010, Geography)
Dissertation: Geographic Perspectives on International Law: Human Rights and Hurricane Katrina
J.D. Cornell University Law School (2003, law)
Symposium Editor, Cornell International Law Journal
Certificate, National University of Ireland/Galway & New England School of Law (2001, International and Comparative Human Rights Law)
B.A., Vassar College (1996, Geography with a secondary concentration in international economics)
Dr. Carmalt's research and teaching focus on geography, international law and society, and human rights. Her scholarship focuses on Critical Geographies of Human Rights, and she has written about how geography and human rights intersect in relation to the right to health, UN human rights processes, and environmental disasters. Her work can be found in journals such as the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Human Rights Quarterly, Progress in Human Geography, and Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, as well as in edited volumes by Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and Oxford University Press. In addition to teaching within the Law and Society major at John Jay, she is a member of the Earth and Environmental Sciences faculty at CUNY's Graduate Center.
LWS 200: Introduction to Law and Society
LWS 425: Colloquium for Research in Law and Society
LWS 380: Special Topics in Law and Society (Legal Disruption Project)
POL 320: International Human Rights
EES 704: Nature of Scientific Research
EES 799: Critical Geographies of Human Rights
HR 700: Introduction to Human Rights
Law and Society Association
Carmalt, JC (2023). Human Rights, Remedy, and Everyday Geographies of Injustice: Perspectives from a Participatory Action Research Project. Human Rights Quarterly, 45(4), 601-627.
Carmalt, JC (2019). Critical geographies of human rights and the spatial dimensions of international law violations in Rakhine State, Myanmar. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 109(6), 1829-1844.
Carmalt, JC (2018). Neoliberal geographies and the justiciability of health as a human right. In Gillian MacNaughton and Diane Frey (Eds), Economic and Social Rights in a Neoliberal World (304-322). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Carmalt, JC (2017). For critical geographies of human rights. Progress in Human Geography, 42(6),847-861.
Carmalt, JC (2016). Human Rights for Disaster Risk Reduction including Climate Change Adaptation. In Ilan Kelman, Jessica Mercer, JC Gaillard (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation. New York, NY: Routledge.
Carmalt, JC (2014). Prioritizing Health: A Human Rights Analysis of Disaster, Vulnerability, and Urbanization in New Orleans and Port au Prince. Health and Human Rights 16(1), 1-15.
Carmalt, JC (2014). Human rights in context: International law and spatial injustice in New Orleans, Louisiana. Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 63, 147-181.
Yamin, AE and Carmalt, JC. (2013) The United States: Article 25 obligations in the context of inequalities and reform. In José Zuniga, Stephen Marks, and Lawrence Gostin (Eds), Advancing the Human Right to Health (231-241). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Carmalt, JC. and C. Haenni-Dale (2012). Human Rights and Disaster. In Benjamin Wisner, J.C. Gaillard, and Ian Kelman (Eds), Handbook of Hazards and Disasters (61-70). New York, NY: Routledge.
Carmalt, JC., S. Zaidi, AE. Yamin (2011). Entrenched Inequity: Health Care in the United States of America. In Shareen Hertel and Kathryn Libal (Eds), Human Rights in the USA (153-174). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Carmalt, JC (2011). Human Rights, Care Ethics, and Situated Universal Norms. Antipode 43(2), 296–325.
Carmalt, JC. and T. Faubion (2010). Normative approaches to critical health geography. Progress in Human Geography 34(3), 292-308.
Carmalt, JC (2008). Holding the U.S. Accountable: How American Health Care Fails to Meet International Human Rights Standards. N.Y. City L. Rev. 11, 359.
Carmalt, JM (2007). Rights and Place: Using Geography in Human Rights Work. Human Rights Quarterly 29(1), 68-85.
2019 (with Michael Yarbrough & Jamie Longazel) Presidential Student-Faculty Research Award for the project Diversity, Inequality and Law in the Global City of New York: Preliminary Research for an Externally Funded Project in the Law and Society Major.
2017 Runner-up, Kwando Kinshasa Mentor Award. John Jay College of Criminal Justice McNair Program.
2016 Kwando Kinshasa Mentor Award. John Jay College of Criminal Justice McNair Program.
2009-10 AAUW American Dissertation Fellowship
Jean Carmalt is a human rights lawyer who studies the way socio-legal and geographic theories relate to public international law. She specializes in analyzing the spatial dimension of injustice as it relates to remedies, natural hazards, and economic and social rights. Her work includes specific case studies about the way injustice gets built into urban landscapes and theoretical interventions focused on the way universal norms relate to local practices, care ethics, and everyday life. She created an interdisciplinary framework of analysis called "critical geographies of human rights" that incorporates socio-legal, geographic, and international legal dimensions, which is detailed in her 2018 article on Myanmar. Carmalt also has experience as a human rights advocate, first at Human Rights First as part of the team working on International Criminal Court negotiations and then at the Center for Economic and Social Rights as a legal coordinator. Her most recent work focuses on participatory research processes in relation to economic and social rights violations in urban environments.