Manager of Communications
Sam leads communications at FracTracker Alliance. He turns the organization's research, data, and maps into stories and media strategy that help communities push back against fossil fuel, petrochemical, and data center development.
Sam began organizing against fracking in upstate New York in 2008. With the Shaleshock Action Alliance, he ran public education campaigns and handled press in the years before New York banned fracking. Since 2025, he has worked with community groups opposing data center projects in Central Texas.
Sam holds a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, where he is now a research affiliate. His research looks at how communities challenge harms from complex socio-technical systems. After long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico City, he is now studying how the data center industry is reshaping rural Central Texas and how communities are organizing in response. His writing has appeared in South Atlantic Quarterly, Qualitative Sociology, and NACLA Report on the Americas. His has received research funding from the Fulbright, Social Science Research Council, and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars.
Outside of work, Sam enjoys movement of all kinds, from biking and running to swimming in upstate New York's swimming holes. He can often be found out late dancing in Austin's honky tonks.
Email: sam.law@fractracker.org
