This course gives students a firm understanding of the interplay of, and feedbacks between, nature and culture over time. The taught full- or part-time degree has a strong methodological focus, including training in digital humanities technologies, mixed (quantitative-qualitative) methods and innovative assessment design, supplemented by an optional self-financed field trip to Iceland. The purpose of this M.Phil. programme is to train students in methods and themes that are directly relevant to the professional workplace at a time when there is an increasing awareness of the need to include the competencies and insights of the humanities in understanding and addressing environmental issues, not least climate change. Training in critical thinking and mixed methods research skills will open up students’ career perspectives in the public sector, media, private consultancies and NGOs, as well as being an excellent entry point for doctoral studies.
Relevant preparatory courses include NFQ level 8-degree courses in the Humanities (History, Political Science, History of Ideas, Cultural Studies or similar) or the Natural Sciences (Environmental Sciences, Geography, Ecology, Biology or similar). Applicants should normally have at least an upper second class (2.1) Honours Bachelor’s degree or equivalent (for example, GPA of 3.3) in a relevant discipline or specialisation.
Applications for the 2022/23 academic year are open until 30 June 2022.
As usual, this month we are delighted to feature the great work of another POLLEN node, Political Ecology Reading Group (PERG) at the University of Sheffield. If your node is keen to share your work in upcoming newsletters, please write to us at politicalecologynetwork@gmail.com.
We are pleased to share some recent publications, CfPs and more from our lively community. We also welcome proposals for blog posts on the POLLEN blog – please contact us at the same email address with any ideas!
Some news: POLLEN is running a fundraiser to support the POLLEN secretariat with its networking and knowledge sharing work. Please donate if you can at this link: https://gofund.me/79f7b227 . This will be our last newsletter for a couple of months as we wind down for the Northern summer – our twitter feed and other web activities will continue as usual.
Each monthly newsletter includes a brief introduction to one of our many POLLEN nodes, to build connections across our community. This month we would like to introduce you to our node at the Political Ecology Reading Group (PERG) at the University of Sheffield.
Political Ecology Reading Group (PERG) at the University of Sheffield
Overview
The Political Ecology Reading Group brings together researchers, students and faculty from various departments and research centres across the University of Sheffield and beyond. Our colleagues’ interests span diverse issues, including biodiversity conservation, rural transformations, sustainability, wildlife crime, remote sensing, environmental politics and animal studies. The group convenes every two weeks for seminars, roundtables and other events and it is a safe space where its members present work in progress, engage in passionate discussions of essential political ecology texts, and serves as a platform for interdisciplinary collaborations. We welcome external guest speakers and actively encourage participation from students and early-career researchers.
Node members:
Teresa Lappe-Osthege works as Postdoctoral Research Associate on the Beastly Business Project in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield. She leads a project that examines the links between corporate businesses and green-collar crime in the illegal songbird trade in Europe, focusing on the Western Balkans and EU Member States (e.g. Cyprus and Italy). Her research is informed by political ecology and green political economy; she is particularly interested in exploring environmental politics and questions of (un)sustainability in post-conflict contexts, having completed her PhD on socio-ecological injustices and inequalities in EU peace-building in Kosovo.
Rosaleen Duffy is a professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations. Her work centres on the global politics of biodiversity conservation, and focuses on global environmental governance, wildlife trafficking, poaching, transfrontier conservation and tourism. Recently, her work has sought to understand the growing links between global security and biodiversity conservation and she just published a book ‘Security and Conservation: The Politics of the Illegal Wildlife Trade (Yale UP). From 2016- 2020 she was Principal Investigator on European Research Council Advanced Investigator Grant for BIOSEC – Biodiversity and Security: Understanding environmental crime, illegal wildlife trade and threat finance. She is currently PI on the ESRC funded Beastly Business project, which examines green crime, political ecology and illegal wildlife trade in European species.
George Iordachescu is a postdoc on the Beastly Business project which he co-designed with other team members. His project combines political ecology and green criminology approaches to investigate the hidden dynamics of brown bear trafficking in Europe. During his PhD he researched the emergence of wilderness protection in Eastern Europe, specifically the clashes between private protected areas and traditional forms of land governance in Romania (Conservation and Society, Open Book Publishers). He was part of the BIOSEC: Biodiversity and Conservation project, where he explored the impact of EU regulations on the illegal logging and timber trade in the Carpathian Mountains (Political Geography, Environment and Society: Arcadia). He is the co-convenor of the Political Ecology Reading Group at the University of Sheffield.
Jocelyne Sze is a PhD candidate in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology cluster, School of Biosciences. Her research looks at the contributions of Indigenous peoples’ lands to tropical forest conservation, using spatial maps and regression modelling. Her work seeks to support Indigenous and local communities in their land tenure and other rights recognition. She is broadly interested in convivial and decolonial approaches to conservation.
Judith Krauss is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Sheffield’s Institute for Global Sustainable Development (UK). Judith explored cocoa sustainability and especially its environmental dimension in Nicaragua and Colombia for her PhD (Geoforum, Global Networks, Journal of Political Ecology). During her post-doc, she has worked with great colleagues from diverse geographies and disciplines on convivial conservation (Conservation and Society,Globalizations,JPE), decolonizing the Sustainable Development Goals (Sustainability Science) and livelihoods in Mozambique under Covid (World Development). Judith is passionate about bringing together sustainability and solidarity in research, teaching and public engagement, and serves as an Associate Editor for JPE.
2. PUBLICATIONS
Journal articles
Apostolopoulou, E., Bormpoudakis, D., Chatzipavlidis, A., Cortés Vázquez, J., Florea, I., Gearey, M., Levy, J., Loginova, J., Ordner, J., Partridge, T., Pizarro, A., Rhoades, H., Symons, K., Veríssimo, C., and Wahby, N. 2022. ‘Radical social innovations and the spatialities of grassroots activism: navigating pathways for tackling inequality and reinventing the commons’, Journal of Political Ecology, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 144–188. <https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2292>.
Dunlap, A. & Laratte, L. 2022. ‘European Green Deal Necropolitics: Degrowth, ‘Green’ Energy Transition & Infrastructural Colonization’, Political Geography, vol. 97, no. 1, pp. 1-15. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102640>.
Dunlap, A. 2022. ‘I don’t want your progress, it tries to kill… me!’ Decolonial Encounters and the Anarchist Critique of Civilization’, Globalizations: pp. 1-26. <https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2022.2073657>.
Dunlap, A. 2022. ‘Weaponizing people in environmental conflicts: Capturing ‘hearts’, ‘minds’, and manufacturing ‘volunteers’ for extractive development’, Current Sociology, pp. 1-23. <https://doi.org/10.1177%2F00113921221086828>.
Eversberg, D., and Fritz, M. 2022. ‘Bioeconomy as a societal transformation: Mentalities, conflicts and social practices’, Sustainable Production and Consumption, vol.30, pp. 973-987. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2022.04.009>.
Fougères, D., Jones, M., McElwee, P.D., Andrade, A., and Edwards, S.R. 2022. ‘Transformative conservation of ecosystems’, Global Sustainability, vol. 5. <https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2022.4>.
Fritz, M., Eversberg, D., Pungas, L., and Venghaus, S. 2022. ‘Special issues: Promises of growth and sustainability in the bioeconomy’, Sustainable Production and Consumption, pp. 839-841. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2022.01.021>.
Helmcke, C. 2022. ‘Ten recommendations for political ecology case research’, Journal of Political Ecology, vol. 29, no. 1, pp.266–276. <https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2842>.
Koot, S., Hebinck, P. and Sullivan, S. 2022. ‘Conservation science and discursive violence: A response to two rejoinders’. Society & Natural Resources. <https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2022.2064023>.
Köpke, S. 2022. ‘Interrogating the Links between Climate Change, Food Crises and Social Stability’, Earth, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 577-589. <https://doi.org/10.3390/earth3020034>.
Lunden, A., and Tornel, C. 2022. ‘Re-worlding: Pluriversal politica in the anthropocene’, Nordia Geographical Publications, vol. 51, no. 2. <https://nordia.journal.fi/issue/view/51-2>.
Moreno-Quintero, R., Córdoba, D., and Acevedo, R., 2022. ‘Decolonizing local planning through new social cartography: making Black geographies visible in a plantation context in Colombia’, Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal. <https://doi.org/10.1080/23802014.2022.2061724>.
Moseley, W.G. and Ouedraogo, M., 2022. ‘When Agronomy Flirts with Markets, Gender and Nutrition: A Political Ecology of the New Green Revolution for Africa and Women’s Food Security in Burkina Faso’, African Studies Review, vol. 65, no. 1, pp. 41-65. <https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2021.74>.
O’Lear, S., Massé, F., Dickinson, H. and Duffy, R. 2022. ‘Disaster making in the capitalocene’, Global Environmental Politics, pp. 1-10. <https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00655>.
Bluwstein, J. 2022. Historical Political Ecology of the Tarangire Ecosystem: From Colonial Legacies, to Contested Histories, towards Convivial Conservation? In Kiffner, C., Bond, M., and Lee, D. (eds), Tarangire: Human-Wildlife Coexistence in a Fragmented Ecosystem. Springer. <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93604-4_2>.
3.1 International Conference of the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies (ZtG) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Nature-Society Relations and the Global Environmental Crisis – Thinking on Climate Change and Sustainability from the Fields of Intersectional Theory and Transdisciplinary Gender Studies
From Thursday, 4th May to Saturday, 6th May 2023 at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Senate Hall)
Human-made climate change has been a subject for science and politics for decades – and is more and more becoming one for the law. Society’s relations to the natural world have changed so much since the start of industrialization that global survival and life on Earth are being called into question. As early as the 1970s, the report for the Club of Rome highlighted the “limits of growth” for humankind. Almost from the outset of such research, the organization of the capitalist economy was identified as driving the ecological crisis. Sociological analyses identified the process of societal modernization as being fundamental to the collapse of our environment. Feminist positions understand the gendered hierarchies underlying the relationship between humans and the more-than-human world as being both the basic cause and the concrete expression of the global environmental crisis. These hierarchies extend to climate policy and law. At the same time, feminist perspectives offer visions of how this relationship can be rethought.
We invite contributions from all fields of study, in particular those that take intersectional approaches and investigate the complexities of nature-society relations and the global environmental crisis. We welcome abstracts for papers of 20 minutes length. Abstracts should not exceed 400 words. Please also include a short biography (50-100 words) with your submission.
3.2 International virtual workshop: “Etosha-Kunene Conservation Conversations: Knowing, Protecting and Being-with Nature, from Etosha Pan to the Skeleton Coast”
The Etosha-Kunene Histories research project invites contributions / participations in an online workshop bringing together researchers and conservation practitioners with diverse perspectives on environmental and conservation concerns in north-west Namibia. The workshop aims to provide a platform for a conversation on conservation policies and practices in ‘Etosha-Kunene’, taking historical perspectives and diverse natural and cultural histories into account. We envisage an open access edited volume to be one of the main outcomes of the workshop.
The workshop will be held on 5-6 July 2022. Deadline for abstracts is 6 June.
4.1 Postdoc in Sustainable Societal Transformation and Industrial Change at Karlstad University, Sweden
We are hiring a Postdoc to work on the project ‘Changing Places of Work’. Based in the Department of Political, Historical, Religious and Cultural Studies, you will work alongside geographers and historians in Sweden and England to investigate how green (low-carbon) transitions in the steel industry interact with worker- and place-based identities in industrial communities, and how these interactions affect possibilities for successful and just low-carbon transitions.
This is a full-time position for a period of two years. We particularly welcome applications from candidates with experience in researching processes of societal change, using qualitative fieldwork such as interviews or workshops.
4.2 Postdoc/Researcher post at SLU, Uppsala, Sweden
Would you like to take part in revealing why practices of natural resource management that threaten biodiversity remain in place despite direction provided by science and policy? We invite applications for a postdoc position linked to a research project on barriers to and motivations for societal transition towards management of natural resources that reverses decline of biodiversity, in particular pollinating insects. The project is a close collaboration between social scientists and ecologists and provides an ideal opportunity to develop your inter- and transdisciplinary research capacity.
The position is based at the Department of Ecology of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala (SLU) in Sweden and is in close collaboration with the Department of Urban and Rural Development at SLU. The postdoc will join an interdisciplinary team of social and natural scientists. You will be part of a stimulating, dynamic and collaborative research environment with colleagues who conduct high calibre research in nature conservation, agriculture, wildlife management and forestry.
4.3 PhD Position, the Department of Geography, University of Bergen
The position is linked to the Department of Geography´s focus area on environmental sustainability and societal change. Research issues within the broad theme of human-environment interactions, global environmental change ecology and consequences for nature protection and food production are welcome. Candidates with theoretical interests in environmental geography fields such as political ecology, sustainable land-use, socio-ecological systems and environmental governance, are very welcome to apply.
The position is for a fixed-term period of 4 years, of which 25% will be dedicated to teaching, supervision and administrative tasks in the Department.
The application and appendices with certified translations into English or a Scandinavian language must be uploaded at Jobbnorge following the link on this page marked “Apply for this job”.
4.4 Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor – Environmental Policy, Fenner School of Society and Environment, The Australian National University
We are seeking to appoint an outstanding mid-career academic to contribute to the School’s research, education and impact in the field of environment policy. The Senior Lecturer will contribute to curriculum renewal and lead courses relevant to environment policy. This position has been reserved for female identifying candidates, in order to increase employment opportunities for women in a workplace where they continue to be underrepresented.
EXALT hosts a one-day webinar conference “Green Extractivism & Violent Conflict” on 17 June 2022. This exciting conference features three plenary speakers, and 16 exciting papers across 4 panels. There is no fee to participate, but registration is required. Please click here to register for the conference
This webinar conference will explore the multifaceted connections between ‘green extractivism’ and violent conflicts. The speakers will offer fresh empirical and theoretical insights into the ways ‘decarbonization’, ‘green growth’ and climate change mitigation policies shape and are shaped by dynamics of conflict and violence.
If you have any questions about the conference or the EXALT Initiative, please contact us at exalt@helsinki.fi Follow us on Twitter: @ExaltResearch Follow us on Facebook: @EXALTglobal
This month we are delighted to feature the great work of another POLLEN node, the Division of Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). If your node is keen to share your work in upcoming newsletters, please write to us at politicalecologynetwork@gmail.com.
As always, we are pleased to post the latest publications, CfPs and more from our lively community. We also welcome proposals for blog posts on the POLLEN blog – please contact us at the same email address with any ideas!
Last, we would like to share an important announcement on the change in POLLEN 2022/2023 conference format from the POLLEN2022 Local Organising Committee. Please scroll below.
Announcement: Change in POLLEN 2022/3 conference format
Dear Pollinators.
We, as the POLLEN 2022 Local Organising Committee (LOC) have been pleased to accept session and paper proposals, and inform the approximately 460 participants of their prospective participation in the event. However, we have also had to inform them of an enforced format change for the conference, and would like to take this opportunity to inform the broader network of the same. Members will recall that, as a covid mitigation the conference was moved to a virtual format with verbal assurances of funding from the South African National Conference Bureau. As a reminder this funding was ringfenced for conference delivery by a professional conference organiser partner, African Agenda to deliver an international conference to SANCB standards. This also funded administrative support which the LOC lacks. However, after announcing the shift, the SANCB informed African Agenda that it could not honour the funding in the case of a fully virtual conference. This has precipitated the aforementioned shift in to a dual delivery format.
The first aspect of delivery is to delay the primary conference till the same time in 2023. This will allow us to maintain our funding and deliver the best conference experience we can; in Durban. We hope that tenured staff and those willing and able to travel will join us. We know from advisory collective feedback that many will welcome this change as a chance to reconvene in person, and will allow session and presentation amendments closer to the time. However, we are also acutely aware that there will be attendees who may not be able to travel, or need to present and get feedback on their work this year. We are currently soliciting information from session organisers as to the extent of this group, which may include postgraduate students, members in tenuous employment, or members finalising special issues drawing on conference sessions. We have undertaken to co-organise a series of asynchronous pre-conference workshops with willing POLLEN nodes, to accommodate as many of these individuals and sessions as we are able. Asynchronous delivery will included pre-recorded presentations organised around conference themes, with opportunities for facilitated written discussion, as well as limited live discussion aspects, as appropriate. The content from these sessions will be uploaded to the conference website, and allow engagement by conference participants and the broader POLLEN network and beyond.
We hope that with this two pronged approach for POLLEN2022/3 will be workable compromise to an unforeseen challenge. We also hope the asynchronous conferencing will provide engagement opportunities with conference content for the broader network, as well an learning opportunity for the expanding network in anticipation of similar asynchronous, or distributed events In the future.
Many thanks
Adrian, Shauna and the LOC
Getting to know your fellow POLLEN members
Each monthly newsletter includes a brief introduction to one of our many POLLEN nodes, to build connections across our community. This month we would like to introduce you to our node at the Division of Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).
The Division of Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Overview
The Division of Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences engages in multi-disciplinary social science research on issues relating to rural development in the global North and South. We have expertise that spans across the critical social sciences, while also engaging with other fields within the natural sciences and humanities to make sense of rural and agricultural dynamics. With particular strengths in qualitative, participatory, local level, in-depth studies, we draw on a wide variety of methods and theoretical orientations. Our research and teaching engage with justice, knowledge and power in agriculture, forestry, development and environmental politics. Our strength lies in our commitment to probing how development processes unfold through interdisciplinary conceptualisations and participatory methodologies.
Node members
Flora Hajdu Flora Hajdu is an associate professor working on rural development in South Africa, Lesotho, Malawi, Uganda and Tanzania. Her work looks at power relations and discourses in various local, national and global processes that impact on local level livelihoods in these countries. This includes agricultural development and carbon forestry/restoration projects driven by outside interests as well as impacts of national and donor-funded social cash transfer programmes. She has also engaged with literature on the livelihoods of children and youth, the effects of AIDS on livelihoods and African degradation narratives.
Harry Fischer Harry Fischer is an associate professor, who works on natural resource governance and rural development in India and Nepal. He has active projects on the role of local and subnational democratic politics in shaping adaptive responses to climate risk and change, and on the institutional drivers of joint human and environmental outcomes from forest and landscape restoration.
Klara Fischer Klara Fischer is associate professor and acting subject chair of Rural Development in the global South. Klara specialises on the relations between smallholders’ farming practices and agricultural discourses, policies and technologies targeted at smallholders. Empirically Klara’s research concerns 1) smallholders’ experiences with new biotechnologies, 2) smallholders’ knowledges and practices in crop and livestock farming and the interaction between local and formal knowledge and 3) local livelihood effects of climate compensation technologies and policies. Geographically most of Klara’s research is located in Uganda and South Africa.
Linda Engström Engström’s overall research focus is the politics of development and its impacts on rural populations in East Africa. Trends of privatisation in (rural) development and the frequent gap between development policy versus practice constitute main elements. Her analyses of development policy explore the intersection between how development policy frames problems, how it is enacted, perceived by and impacting rural residents. Engström’s current research focuses on local effects of carbon forestry in East Africa and the (re)distribution and land justice for rural smallholders and herders, following cancelled large-scale agro-investments in Tanzania.
Noémi Gonda Noémi Gonda, researcher at the Department of Urban and Rural Development, holds a PhD from Central European University (Budapest, Vienna). She is currently doing research on justice and conflict resolution in resource management as well as on the linkages between natural resources depletion and authoritarian populist regimes in Nicaragua and Hungary. Previously to becoming a researcher, she worked in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala with smallholder farmers, Indigenous groups, and development organisations. Noémi is interested in exploring how radical social and environmental transformations towards justice and equity can emerge, and the role of scholar-activists in supporting the emergence of such transformations.
Patrik Oskarsson Patrik Oskarsson works as teacher and researcher on resource politics. His present research projects seek pathways to justice for Indian coalfield communities as mining inevitably comes to an end, and the possibilities to tackle environmental pollution via participatory environmental monitoring. His broader research interests include changes to land and resource uses and what these mean to rural populations in the Global South. His analysis of large-scale extractive projects has often explored the intersection of the natural resource base with the way that the politics of knowledge work to frame such problems and shape them into particular, often technical, solutions.
Stephanie Stephanie is a researcher at SLU interested in feminist political ecology, water management, agrarian change, gender and development research and Education for Sustainable Development. She received a four-year Mobility Grant of FORMAS for the project “Revitalizing community-managed irrigation systems in contexts of out-migration in Nepal”. 2014-2017 she was a Postdoctoral Fellow for Gender, Poverty and Institutions at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Nepal, and led studies in inter- and transdisciplinary projects within the CGIAR Program “Water, Land and Ecosystems” in India, Nepal and Bangladesh. She holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Cologne, Germany.
PUBLICATIONS
Journal articles
Brock, A., Stephenson, C., Stephens-Griffin, N., and Wyatt, T. 2022. ‘Go home, get a job, and pay some taxes to replace a bit of what you’ve wasted’: Stigma power and solidarity in response to anti-open-cast mining activism in the coalfields of rural county Durham, UK. Sociological Research Online. <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13607804211055486>.
Calvário, R. 2022. ‘The making of peasant subalternity in Portugal: histories of marginalisation and resistance to agrarian modernisation’. The Journal of Peasant Studies. <https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2021.2020256>.
Cattaneo, C., Kallis, G., Demaria, F., Zografos, C., Sekulova, F., D’Alisa, G., Varvarousis, A., and Conde, M. 2022. ‘A degrowth approach to urban mobility options: just, desirable and practical options’. The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability. <https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2022.2025769>.
Chakraborty, R., Sadeepa J., Hirini P.M., Shannon D., Lizzie M., James E., and Pablo G. 2022. ‘Pursuing plurality: Exploring the synergies and challenges of knowledge co-production in multifunctional landscape design’. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. <https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.680587>.
Deutsch, S., and Fletcher, R. 2022. ‘The ‘Bolsonaro bridge’: violence, visibility, and the 2019 Amazon fires’. Environmental Science & Policy, vol. 132, pp. 60-68. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2022.02.012>.
Fisher, K., Jakobsen, J., and Westengen, O.T., 2022. ‘The political ecology of crops : From seed to state and capital’. Geoforum, vol. 130, pp. 92-95. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.12.011>.
Hamidov, A., Daedlow, K., Webber, H., Hussein, H., Abdurahmanov, I., Dolidudko, A., Seerat, A.Y., Solieva, U., Woldeyohanes, T., and Helming, K., 2022. ‘Operationalizing water-energy-food nexus research for sustainable development in social-ecological systems: an interdisciplinary learning case in Central Asia’. Ecology and Society, vol. 27. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-12891-270112>.
Haverkamp, J. 2021. ‘Where’s the Love? Recentering Indigenous and Feminist Ethics of Care for Engaged Climate Research’. Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 1–15. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7782>.
Hung, P.-Y. and Lien, Y.-H. 2022. Maritime borders: A reconsideration of state power and territorialities over the ocean. Progress in Human Geography. <https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325221074698>.
Revista Ambiente e Sociedade (bilingual Portuguese and English), 2021. Applied Social Sciences, Biological Sciences, Human Sciences. vol. 24. <https://www.scielo.br/j/asoc/i/2021.v24/>.
Vojno, N., Horst, R., Hussein, H., Nolden, T., Badawy, A., Goubert, A., Sharipova, B., Pedrero, F., Peters, S., and Damkjaer, S., 2022. ‘Beyond barriers: the fluid roles young people adopt in water conflict and cooperation’. Water International. <https://doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2021.2021481>.
Paul Foley (Memorial University of Newfoundland) and Jennifer Silver (University of Guelph) are excited to be launching a co-edited book project, The Routledge Handbook on Critical Ocean Studies, and are seeking contributors! If you would like more information or be interested in participating, please see: bit.ly/3HLXcj6
Calls for participation
Reframing Water and Climate Resilience – online symposium Organised by the University of Reading and the Institute of Development Studies (Sussex)
Event: May 27th, 2022
This symposium aims to bring together the overlapping conversations around resilience, climate, water, communication and politics in order to advance social justice and reduce climate-induced water vulnerability. Throughout our one-day symposium we will engage with the following questions: How can we put social justice at the core of climate and water resilience practice? How can water and climate resilience be imagined, communicated, represented and visualised differently? And, what can we learn from over a decade of critical resilience research that can help us to confront the water and climate challenges which lie ahead? With this call for contributions, we hope to find scholars, studies and practice-based knowledge which acknowledge that building climate/water resilience is a profoundly socio-political challenge. Moreover, we are looking for interdisciplinary approaches and perspectives on the diverse framing and discourses of resilience promoted by local and global networks of actors.
1. Assistant Professor in European/Latin America: Contemporary Illiberal and Authoritarian Regimes, Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam We seek an Assistant Professor in European and/or Latin American Studies to provide education in a dynamic context with ample opportunities for the development of innovative teaching methods. Your research will be part of the Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies (ARTES), one of the five research schools of the Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research.
The position will be embedded within the Department of History, European Studies and Religious Studies and Hermetica, in the capacity group European Studies or in the capacity group Latin American Studies (CEDLA).
Applications close: 3 Apr 2022 More information, please click here.
2. Lecturer/ Senior Lecturer (Environmental Policy/ Governance; 5-year fixed term contract) at the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific (CAP), Australian National University
We are seeking a candidate that has a strong passion for teaching, an excellent capacity for collaborative research and outreach, and an entrepreneurial approach to building partnerships and resourcing their research and impact. Expertise in one or more of the following areas will be highly valued: oceans and fisheries, Indigenous environments, urban environments or climate change. Experience in the Asia-Pacific and/or Australia is important, with an emphasis on complementing the group’s existing geographic strengths. Ideas for new course offerings are welcome. Increasing the representation of women and academics from culturally or linguistically diverse backgrounds is a strategic priority for the Crawford School. We strongly encourage applications from these groups.
Enquiries: please contact Professor John McCarthy T: +61 2 6125 0494 or E: John.McCarthy@anu.edu.au
Applications close: 29 Apr 2022 11:55:00 PM AUS Eastern Standard Time More information, please click here.
3. Lecturer/ Senior Lecturer (Environmental Economics; continuing position) at the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific (CAP), Australian National University
We are seeking to appoint an outstanding early to mid-career academic to contribute to the School’s research, education and policy impact in the field of environment management and development. The Lecturer/Senior Lecturer will contribute to curriculum renewal and lead courses relevant to the Masters in Environmental Management and Development (MEMDV), the Masters of Climate Change, and that will contribute to other Crawford and ANU teaching programs. Expertise in one or more of the following areas will be highly valued: environmental valuation, cost-benefit analysis, environmental policy choice and design, implementation and evaluation of environmental policy. Applications of environmental economics to fields such as land use, agriculture, biodiversity or climate change are desirable, building on READ’s existing strengths in the economics of water and energy. Experience in Australia and/or the Asia-Pacific region that complements the group’s existing geographical coverage will be valued. Ideas for new course offerings are welcome. Increasing the representation of women and academics from culturally or linguistically diverse backgrounds is a strategic priority for the Crawford School. We strongly encourage applications from these groups.
Enquiries: please contact Associate Professor Keith Barney T: +61 2 6125 4957 or E: Keith.Barney@anu.edu.au
Applications close: 15 Apr 2022 11:55:00 PM AUS Eastern Standard Time More information, please click here.
The course includes a section on Resource Politics led by Amber Huff, which explores how resources and ‘nature’ are framed and understood, questions in political ecology, crisis, plural stories and pathways, and other issues. The course is open access, and includes six lectures recorded at last year’s virtual STEPS Summer School, along with new Open Access reading lists and suggested questions. STEPS Centre is especially keen to spread the word to those who might want to use the course in their own teaching programmes, or share it with student communities for their own use.
This month we are delighted to feature the great work of another POLLEN node, the Political Ecology and Landscape Governance research group at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). If your node is keen to share your work in upcoming newsletters, please write to us at politicalecologynetwork@gmail.com.
As always, we are pleased to post the latest publications, jobs, CfPs and more from our lively community. We also welcome proposals for blog posts on the POLLEN blog – please contact us at the same email address with any ideas! Do check out our latest blog post on “How EU public money finances environmental sacrifice: A call for change” by Alexander Dunlap here.
Each monthly newsletter includes a brief introduction to one of our many POLLEN nodes, to build connections across our community. This month we would like to introduce you to our node at The Political Ecology and Landscape Governance research group at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
The Political Ecology and Landscape Governance research group at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Overview
The Political Ecology and Landscape Governance research group at NTNU works across this geographical sub-field, with multi-scalar research on power relations, knowledge systems, conservation science and politics, environmental governance, and policy. We have a particular emphasis across our projects on identifying and challenging how parallel debates about the local and the global, materiality and representations, knowledge, power, justice, and democracy can mutually inform both political ecology and critical landscape research.
We are an interdisciplinary team conducting research in countries around the world, including Norway, Tanzania, Ecuador, Indonesia, the United States, and Finland; our networks extend within and beyond these locales. Our group is actively involved in the POLLEN network, the Cultural and Political Ecology specialty group of the American Association of Geographers, and the Nordic Geography community. Our research engages across the Department of Geography’s four strategic areas: Nature, resource management and landscape, Natural hazards and effects of climate change, Globalization, mobility and citizenship; and Innovation and regional changes.
NTNU Node members
Node members
Dr. Elizabeth Barron Dr. Barron’s research interests are broadly on understanding different knowledge systems for addressing human-environment challenges in the areas of conservation and resource management, alternative economics, and sustainability. She worked extensively on social and institutional dimensions of fungal conservation as part of her PhD and postdoctoral work. Her current research is on place-based sustainability theory and practice, where she is developing the concept of emplaced sustainability and the associated emplacement framework. She also serves as the group leader for the Political Ecology and Landscape Governance research group in the department. From 2018-2022 she is a coordinating lead author for the IPBES Assessment on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species.
Professor Karoline Daugstad Karoline Daugstad is professor in social geography with landscape geography as a focus area. Her research interests cover representations of landscape, landscape policies and management, cultural heritage in tourism, mountain farming, protected landscapes, and natural resource management. Perspectives of landscape governance is included in her research. The research has mainly taken place in a Norwegian context, but she has also undertaken studies in mountain communities in Austria and northern Spain.
Dr. Jørund Aasetre Dr. Jørund Aasetre is an Associate Professor at Department of Teacher Education (70%) and Department of Geography (30%), at NTNU. At Geography Aasetre teaches Environmental Geography and co-ordinates their part of the international master program on nature resources management (MSNARM). At Department for Teacher Education, he teaches new geography teachers. As a researcher Aasetre has worked with several issues on nature management in Norway, such as forest recreation and forest history, nature restoration, conservation management, large predators as well as Salomon fjords. In addition, he does research on Environmental Education in Ethiopia and South Sudan in cooperation with PhD candidates.
Professor Gunhild Setten Gunhild Setten is a professor of human geography at NTNU. Her research interests include human-nature relationships, moral geography, environmental practices, plants and alien species, outdoor recreation, social cohesion, and community dynamics. Her research works have been published in journals such as Cultural Geographies, Geoforum, Landscape Research, Geografiska Annaler Series B, Land Use Policy, Gender, Place and Culture, Norwegian Journal of Geography, Environment and Planning A, and International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. Professor Setten has also published with Routledge, Elsevier, Ashgate and Springer. Her professional networks are mainly based in Australia, Sweden and the UK.
Professor Haakon Lein Haakon Lein is a professor in human geography at the department of geography NTNU. His main research interests are related to rural livelihoods and access to natural resources especially water and land/biodiversity. This has mainly been explored based on experiences from fieldwork in communities in Bangladesh, China (Xinjiang) and Tanzania. He is currently involved in research on climate change and environmental risks in highland communities in Norway and East Africa.
Professor Ståle Angen Rye Professor Ståle Angen Rye is a human geographer, and his works focuses on globalization and innovation studies. His teaching and research focus on (i) citizens involvement in natural resource governance and (ii) youth’s participation in urban and societal development. Globalization, transnational relations, and citizenship are all central dimensions. The empirical foundation for his work is Norway and Indonesia, but he also has field experiences from several African countries. In addition to political participation, He has researched international higher education and the use of Internet in transnational knowledge networks.
Dr. Diana Raquel Vela Almeida Diana is a senior researcher in the Department of Geography at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and a member of the Collective of Critical Geography in Ecuador. Diana has written on extractivism and social transformations, resource geography, austerity and political ecology, ecological struggles and territorial defense from feminism, local reproductive economies and a critique of the green capitalism of the new green transition proposals globally. She is currently working on the project “Environmental Policy Instruments across Commodity Chains (EPICC): Comparing multi-level governance for Biodiversity Protection and Climate Action in Brazil, Colombia, and Indonesia” to map the governance and power links that connect the multiple territories of production of mineral and food commodities in Brazil, Colombia and Indonesia exported to Europe and their plural legal systems with the European regulatory, political and socio-economic space. Diana also is an associate editor of Uneven Earth media and an International Board member of the Journal of Latin American Geography.
Dr Teklehaymanot G. Weldemichel Teklehaymanot G. Weldemichel is human geographer with a research interest in topics around political ecology, environmental justice, conservation and development politics and policies, state violence, and the broader discourses of sustainable development. Teklehaymanot has written and published research works on Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. His current research work, among others, focuses on the analysis of the translation of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals into urban planning and practice in Norway.
Michael Ogbe Michael Ogbe is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Geography, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). His PhD is within the fields of Geographic Information Science and Natural Resource Management. Specifically, he is researching Spatial Crowdsourcing and Citizen Participation in the management of Petroleum revenue in Ghana. He has a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in Development Studies, specializing in Geography from NTNU, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Geography and Resource Development from the University of Ghana, Legon.
Professor Päivi Lujala Päivi Lujala is Professor of Human Geography and Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the University of Oulu, Finland, and Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian School of Economics, Norway. Her research focuses on two broad topics: management of valuable natural resources in the Global South and adaption to climate (change) related natural hazards. She has led several multidisciplinary projects on the links between primary commodity sector, development, and security, and she has published widely on these topics in top journals. Her current research on climate change focuses on climate migration in the Global South.
Dr. Sabrina Scherzer Sabrina Scherzer has a background in economics and geography and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Geography Research Unit at the University of Oulu, Finland. Her current research focuses on participation and accountability in the management of high-value natural resources and their revenues. During her doctoral research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), she looked into community resilience to natural hazards in Norway. Sabrina also holds two master’s degrees from UK universities, one in Development Finance from the University of Reading and one in International Development from the University of Bath.
Ritah Kigonya Ritah Kigonya is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Geography, NTNU. She has a background in forest sciences. Her research revolves around financial conservation measures including Payments for Ecosystem Services and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation. Her PhD study explores the use of biodiversity offsetting to finance protected area management. Her broader topics of interest are neoliberal conservation and natural resource management, especially incentive based conservation, and protected area management.
Dr. Solomon Zena Walelign Solomon Zena Walelign is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, consultant at the World Bank, and Adjunct Assistant Professor at University of Gondar. He completed a double Ph.D. in Environmental and Resource Economics at University of Copenhagen and in Forest Sciences at Georg-August University of Göttingen in January 2017. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Copenhagen, Visiting Scholar at the University of South Carolina, and University of California Berkeley. Solomon’s research is on livelihoods, poverty, natural resource management, land transaction, and climate change resettlement.
Chambers, J. M., Massarella, K. and Fletcher, R. 2022. ‘The right to fail? Problematizing failure discourse in international conservation’. World Development. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105723>.
Dunlap, A., and Marin, D. 2022. ‘Comparing coal and ‘transition materials’? Overlooking complexity, flattening reality and ignoring capitalism’. Energy Research & Social Science, Vol. 89, No. 1, pp. 1-9. <https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1eXc9_oMjTCLtc>.
Hamidov, A., Daedlow, K., Webber, H., Hussein, H., Abdurahmanov, I., Dolidudko, A., Seerat, A.Y., Solieva, U., Woldeyohanes, T., and Helming, K., 2022. ‘Operationalizing water-energy-food nexus research for sustainable development in social-ecological systems: an interdisciplinary learning case in Central Asia’. Ecology and Society, Vol. 27. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-12891-270112>.
Kabra, A., and Das, B. 2022, ‘Aye for the tiger: hegemony, authority, and volition in India’s regime of dispossession for conservation’. Oxford Development Studies. <https://doi.org/10.1080/13600818.2022.2028134>.
Vojno, N., Horst, R., Hussein, H., Nolden, T., Badawy, A., Goubert, A., Sharipova, B., Pedrero, F., Peters, S., and Damkjaer, S., 2022. ‘Beyond barriers: the fluid roles young people adopt in water conflict and cooperation’. Water International. <https://doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2021.2021481>.
Calls for proposals
The 17th European Association of Social Anthropologists Biennial Conference – EASA2022: Transformation, Hope and the Commons
Organized by the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University, Belfast
Date: 26-29 July, 2022
The 17th EASA Biennial Conference focuses on the entanglements of transformation, hope and the commons. The global Covid19 pandemic, and societal responses to it, have transformed the societies in which we live and work. Media and political discourses deploy a rhetoric of rupture, facilitating shifts in governance and bio-politics that mask and widen existing inequalities. Instead of the ‘crisis-thinking’ that abstracts current events from broader and historical continuities, we invite anthropologists to make connections through sustained ethnographic and anthropological inquiry.
After Growth: A Symposium on Post-Capitalist Imaginaries
Free: Booking required
After Growth is a symposium, a gathering of bodies and minds, but it is also an invitation to construct another future. At its core is the belief that prosperity does not depend on economic growth, and that – in the face of ongoing climate catastrophe – there is an urgent need to find new ways of living within planetary boundaries.
The concept of ‘degrowth’ emerges from the confluence of activism, ecology and economics, though it also sits within a larger cultural field of creative and artistic practice. Rather than producing blueprints of utopian visions, many of the contributors to this symposium work towards the creation of spaces where post-capitalist forms of life can be incubated.
Taking place both online and in-person, After Growth assembles a diverse array of visions, organisations and initiatives. Together, they will speculate on the possibility of life after growth, placing these at the heart of a city with increasingly green ambitions.
Programmed by Theo Reeves-Evison and Canan Batur. Funded by the University of Nottingham, Nottingham Trent University, and the Leverhulme Trust. This symposium is part of our upcoming research strand Emergency & Emergence, which will be made public in March.
Sat 19 March, 2 – 5.30pm, online
Sun 20 March, 11am – 6pm, The Space at Nottingham Contemporary
1. Research professor at the Institute of Development Policy, University of Antwerp
The vacancy is for Tenure-Track Research Professor (TTZAPBOF – Assistant Professorship) or Research Professor (ZAPBOF – Associate Professor, Professor or Full Professor). As a member of the Senior Academic Staff (Dutch: Zelfstandig Academisch Personeel, ZAP), you will contribute to the University of Antwerp’s three core tasks: research, services and education. Your role may also include organisational and managerial aspects. As a research professor during a 5-year-period, your role will consist primarily of academic research with some limited involvement in the educational programmes.
2. Lecturer/ Senior Lecturer (Environmental Policy/ Governance; 5-year fixed term contract) at the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific (CAP), Australian National University
We are seeking a candidate that has a strong passion for teaching, an excellent capacity for collaborative research and outreach, and an entrepreneurial approach to building partnerships and resourcing their research and impact. Expertise in one or more of the following areas will be highly valued: oceans and fisheries, Indigenous environments, urban environments or climate change. Experience in the Asia-Pacific and/or Australia is important, with an emphasis on complementing the group’s existing geographic strengths. Ideas for new course offerings are welcome. Increasing the representation of women and academics from culturally or linguistically diverse backgrounds is a strategic priority for the Crawford School. We strongly encourage applications from these groups.
Enquiries: please contact Professor John McCarthy T: +61 2 6125 0494 or E: John.McCarthy@anu.edu.au
Applications close: 29 Apr 2022 11:55:00 PM AUS Eastern Standard Time More information, please click here.
3. Lecturer/ Senior Lecturer (Environmental Economics; continuing position) at the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific (CAP), Australian National University
We are seeking to appoint an outstanding early to mid-career academic to contribute to the School’s research, education and policy impact in the field of environment management and development. The Lecturer/Senior Lecturer will contribute to curriculum renewal and lead courses relevant to the Masters in Environmental Management and Development (MEMDV), the Masters of Climate Change, and that will contribute to other Crawford and ANU teaching programs. Expertise in one or more of the following areas will be highly valued: environmental valuation, cost-benefit analysis, environmental policy choice and design, implementation and evaluation of environmental policy. Applications of environmental economics to fields such as land use, agriculture, biodiversity or climate change are desirable, building on READ’s existing strengths in the economics of water and energy. Experience in Australia and/or the Asia-Pacific region that complements the group’s existing geographical coverage will be valued. Ideas for new course offerings are welcome. Increasing the representation of women and academics from culturally or linguistically diverse backgrounds is a strategic priority for the Crawford School. We strongly encourage applications from these groups.
Enquiries: please contact Associate Professor Keith Barney T: +61 2 6125 4957 or E: Keith.Barney@anu.edu.au
Applications close: 15 Apr 2022 11:55:00 PM AUS Eastern Standard Time More information, please click here.
Other news items
The II SIMGAT (II Symposium Geography, Environment and Territory) will take place in Belém (state of Pará, Amazon, Brazil) in November this year. The exact dates are yet to be determined. The event is organised by the Brazilian Network of Researchers on Environmental Geography. The event languages will be Portuguese and Spanish, but we will be delighted to welcome participants from all over the world!
We hope that you have started 2022 renewed and well.
This month we are delighted to feature the great work of another POLLEN node, the Urban Ecologies Project at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, India. If your node is keen to share your work in upcoming newsletters, please write to us at politicalecologynetwork@gmail.com.
As always, we are pleased to post the latest publications, CfPs and more from our lively community. We also welcome proposals for blog posts on the POLLEN blog – please contact us at the same email address with any ideas! Do check out our latest blog post on “Privatisation and commodification: Ecotourism as capitalist expansion in Sumatra, Indonesia” by Stasja Koot and other colleagues here.
Each monthly newsletter includes a brief introduction to one of our many POLLEN nodes, to build connections across our community. This month we would like to introduce you to our node at the Urban Ecologies Project at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, India.
The Urban Ecologies Project at the National Institute of Advanced Studies
Overview
The Urban Ecologies Project is committed to both theoretical advancement and methodological innovation in political ecology, especially in four novel directions. Some of the epistemic centres for Political Ecology, typically in the Global North, have tended to dominate how the political and ecological ought to be studied and parsed. In our work, first we are committed to taking ‘nonhuman lifeworlds seriously, developing methods that combine ethology and ethnography to push for a more ‘ecological’ political ecology. A second commitment is to move from discourse and representation to affect and the politics of knowledge. A third strand, rethinking planetary transformations from India, foregrounds colonial history and post-colonial economy to provide counter-narratives to questions of wildlife in the Anthropocene. Lastly, we are committed to questions of environmental justice in ways that attend to existing practices and the lived experiences of subalterns, drawing on sustained engagement and ethnographic work.
Node members
Anindya “Rana” Sinha Rana, primarily based at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, has previously studied the molecular biochemistry of yeast metabolism, social biology of wasps and the classical genetics of human disease. His principal research, over the last three decades, has been on the behavioural ecology, cognitive ethology, population and behavioural genetics, evolutionary biology and conservation studies of primates. His current research in natural philosophies, animal studies, art heritage and performance studies involve etho-ethnographic explorations of nonhuman synurbisation, human–nonhuman relations and the lived experiences of non/humans, promising unique insights into more-than-human lifeworlds – of the past, today and in the future.
Maan Barua Maan Barua is a social scientist working on the ontologies, economies and politics of the living and material world. His research develops conversations between posthumanist, postcolonial and political economic thought in three arenas: urban ecologies, relations between nature and capitalism, and more recently, the Plantationocene as an alternative analytic for understanding planetary change. Maan is a University Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Cambridge, and an Adjunct Faculty at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore. He is also the Principal Investigator on the ERC Horizon 2020 uEcologies Starting Grant.
Anmol Chowdhury Anmol is currently a doctoral student with the uEcologies project, funded by an ERC Horizon 2020 grant, at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. Their study is trying to understand the lives of rhesus macaques, as they live, across cities in India. Through their work, they are attempting to expand urban political ecology by building conversations between ethnographic and ethological perspectives of thinking about animals. Their other major interests include gender and queer theory, and the geopolitics, folk music and traditional foods of Kashmir.
Ashni Kumar Dhawale Ashni, a doctoral scholar at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, has been documenting the current lifeworlds of a typically rainforest nonhuman primate, the lion-tailed macaque, as it has begun to recently explore and exploit anthropogenic habitats and interact with local human communities. Her attempts to capture the novel, emergent reactions of both macaques and humans, has demanded a repurposing of theory and method in both ethology and political ecology, and an articulation of the socio-political atmospheres that determine and influence the changing dynamics of the synurbisation processes being experienced by nonhuman species in the Anthropocene.
Sayan Banerjee Sayan Banerjee, a doctoral research scholar at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, is examining behavioural and feminist political ecologies of human–elephant interactions in rural, northeastern India. He is deeply interested in human–wildlife relations, interdisciplinary conservation science and socio-ecological studies of Indian forestry. His various projects have documented indigenous hunting in Nagaland state, explored gendered implications of human–elephant interactions, and identified the nature and patterns of community participation in wildlife conservation projects, all in northeastern India.
Shruti Ragavan Shruti Ragavan is a fourth-year doctoral scholar at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore. Her research has been exploring the natures, cultures, and politics of bovines in the cities of Delhi and Guwahati in India. Certain themes that she engages with are bovine ethnographies, writing more-than-human histories of cities, infrastructures, commons, and smellscapes amongst others. Her broader research interests include human–animal relationships in the urban and the impact of planning and design on nonhuman lives.
Shubhangi Srivastava Shubhangi Srivastava is a doctoral research scholar on the ERC-funded Horizon 2020 grant on uEcologies at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore. With a strong interest in nonhuman lives in the urban, her doctoral research, over the past three years, has centred around studying the ecological, political and socio-economic dimensions of human–dog relationships in urban India. She has been using a combination of ethnographic and ethological methods to study human–dog interactions, driven by her motivation to document the establishment of beastly places and the politics surrounding human/nonhuman cohabitation in the Global South.
Sneha Gutgutia Sneha Gutgutia, a doctoral scholar on an ERC-funded Horizon 2020 project on uEcologies at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, has been rethinking urban marginality by examining human–animal relations in informal settlements across India. Her current work focusses on the more-than-human ethnographies of nonhuman animals, primarily pigs, in marginalised human/ nonhuman communities in the urban. Having completed her master’s degree in social work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, she has earlier worked as a researcher and activist on issues of conservation and livelihoods at the Kalpavriksh Environment Action Group in Pune.
Promoting POLLEN collaboration
Do you write with other members of POLLEN? To gain visibility for collaborations across our network, we invite you to consider adding something along these lines to your acknowledgments: “This paper represents collaborative work with colleagues in the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN).”
Fayed, I., and Cummings, J. (eds.) 2021. Teaching in the Post COVID-19 Era: World education dilemmas, teaching innovations and solutions in the age of crisis. Springer. <Teaching in the Post COVID-19 Era | SpringerLink>.
Bori, P. J., and Gonda, N. 2022, ‘Contradictory populist ecologies: Pro-peasant propaganda and land grabbing in rural Hungary’. Political Geography, <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102583>.
Branch, A., F. Agyei, J. Anai, S. Apecu, A. Bartlett, E. Brownell, M. Caravani, C.J. Cavanagh, S. Fennell, S. Langole, M.B. Mabele, T.H. Mwampamba, M. Njenga, A. Owor, J. Phillips, N. Tiitmamer. 2022. From crisis to context: Reviewing the future of sustainable charcoal in Africa. Energy Research & Social Science 87, <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102457>.
Büscher, B., Stasja, K., and Thakholi, L. 2022. ‘Fossilized conservation, or the unsustainability of saving nature in South Africa’. Environment and Planning E, <https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486211062002>.
Büscher, B. 2021. ‘The dangerous intensifications of surplus alienation, or why platform capitalism challenges the (more-than) human’. Dialogues in Human Geography, <https://doi.org/10.1177/20438206221075710>.
Büscher, B. 2021, in press. ‘The nonhuman turn: critical reflections on alienation, entanglement and nature under capitalism’. Dialogues in Human Geography, <https://doi-org /10.1177/20438206211026200>.
Flood Chávez, D.I., and Niewiadomski, P., 2022. ‘The urban political ecology of fog oases in Lima, Peru’. Geoforum. Vol. 129, pp. 1–12.<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.01.001>.
Jakobsen, J. 2022. ‘Beyond subject-making: Conflicting humanisms, class analysis, and the “dark side” of Gramscian political ecology’. Progress in Human Geography. <https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325211056442>.
Sullivan, S. 2021. ‘Cultural heritage and histories of the Northern Namib: historical and oral history observations for the Draft Management Plan, Skeleton Coast National Park 2021/2022-2030/2031’. Future Pasts Working Paper Series 12. <https://www.futurepasts.net/fpwp12-sullivan-2021>.
Thakholi, L., and Büscher, B. 2022. ‘Conserving Inequality: how private conservation and property developers deepen spatial injustice in South Africa’. Environment and Planning E, <https://doi-org/10.1177/25148486211066388>.
Vega, A., Fraser, J.A., Torres, M., and Loures, R. 2022. ‘Those who live like us: Autodemarcations and the co-becoming of indigenous and beiradeiros on the Upper Tapajós River, Brazilian Amazonia’. Geoforum, Vol. 129, pp. 39–48. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.01.003>.
Weldemichel, T.G. 2021. ‘Making land grabbable: Stealthy dispossessions by conservation in Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania’. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, <https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486211052860>.
Calls for proposals
The Journal of Posthumanism welcomes proposals for a special issue on a theme related to posthuman international relations and security (broadly defined).
Special Issues would normally be between 40,000 and 50,000 words, the equivalent of approximately 8 articles of 5000-6000 words, excluding the footnotes and references. We would be amenable to fewer or more articles if remaining within the overall word length, as well as Dossiers that include commentaries and roundtable discussions.
The guest editor/s must ensure that all contributions adhere to the style of the journal (https://journals.tplondon.com/jp/about/submissions) and commit to appropriate peer review of all contributions. This may be coordinated by the guest editor/s or through the journal’s normal (double-blind) peer review system.
The guest editor/s must also ensure that final iterations of all contributions are submitted to the journal no later than May 5, 2023.
Please note that acceptance of a proposal does not guarantee publication of the Special Issue, either in whole or in part.
The special issue proposal should be submitted as a word document to co-editor Dr. Çağdaş Dedeoğlu at posthumanism@tplondon.com by April 15, 2022. A decision will be made within 2 weeks by members of the editorial board, and proposal guest editor/s will be notified by April 29.
Prospective guest editor/s must provide a detailed proposal that includes:
· List of all proposed article titles and authors, along with their institutional affiliation/s,
· 200-300 word abstract of each proposed article,
· Overview outlining the purpose of the special issue, its rationale, and the anticipated contribution to existing literature/debate (up to 1000 words),Short CV of guest editor/s (no more than 3 pages each).
Calls for applications
MA in Political Ecology at Lancaster University
•The only one of its kind in the UK: dedicated to understanding how the environment and politics intersect with issues of power and justice
•You will work with and learn from one of the largest political ecology research groups in the UK
•You will directly engage with both academic and non-academic practitioners of political ecology, including environmental activists and film-makers
•You will take your learning into the ‘real world’ through innovative teaching sessions that move outside the classroom
Brief description:
Interested in challenging the status quo of the environment and its politics?
Come and join us at Lancaster for our recently launched MA in Political Ecology!
We are the only programme of its type in the UK, offering the conceptual tools and practical skills to ask the difficult questions of human-environment relations and drive transformative action. You will be immersed in one of the UK’s largest and dynamic political ecology research groups, which draws upon diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives. These address and analyse critiques, debates and actions related to environmental concerns over local to global scales. Key themes include the politics of resource extraction, water, climate politics and the green economy. We offer novel approaches to our teaching, engaging our students in creative classes that provide tools to understand a complex planet and the challenges of our living with it.
IV Congreso Latinoamericano de Ecología Política (Latin-American Congress on Political Ecology) Ecología política y pensamiento crítico latinoamericano: raíces, trayectorias y miradas al futuro Ecuador | 19-21 de octubre de 2022 (salidas de campo 22 de octubre)
El tema central del Congreso es “Ecología política y pensamiento crítico latinoamericano: raíces, trayectorias y miradas al futuro”. Pueden leer más sobre la convocatoria al congreso, los Ejes temáticos y Líneas de discusión aquí.
El congreso mantendrá un formato híbrido, con algunas actividades solamente presenciales y otras solamente virtuales, en virtud de lo inestable aún de los viajes internacionales y de las restricciones de aforos para un evento presencial en Ecuador, bajo los protocolos de Covid-19. Con esta decisión buscamos garantizar la participación de investigadorxs y estudiantes que buscan compartir los resultados de sus investigaciones con la comunidad académica de la ecología política, así como de los y las activistas y personas de comunidades en resistencia que buscan crear redes de apoyo y reconocimiento mutuo.
Modalidades de participación: Presentaciones individuales (virtual), Paneles armados (virtual), Talleres de creación colectiva (presencial), Rodas de diálogo (presencial), Formatos artísticos (presencial).
Inscripciones a todas las modalidades aquí. Plazo de envío de propuestas: 1 de Marzo, 2022 Plazo de inscripción y pago: 15 de julio, 2022
Vacancies
Campaigner (military and climate change) at the Conflict and Environment Observatory Contract: Until December 2023, Full-time
Position overview Militaries are major polluters but it’s unclear how large their emissions are. Until last year, their emissions had been off the global climate change agenda for 25 years. Now NATO, and the UK, US and some other militaries are pledging reduction targets. The tide has begun to turn but we cannot leave militaries to dictate the pace of change or the level of ambition.
At COP26 in Glasgow we launched military emissions dot org, together with academic partners. Its aim is to communicate the huge gaps in the reporting of military emissions. We also began collaborating with a diverse range of civil society organisations. We now need someone to work with us as we build on this momentum ahead of COP27 and COP28.
The role You will work with our Environmental Policy Officer, Research and Policy Director and academic partners to translate their research on military emissions into accessible advocacy materials. You will develop advocacy campaigns that will align with key events and develop and build a global network of civil society partners and the communication tools to support it.
Application Instructions Send a CV and covering letter in Word or PDF format, with your name as the filename for both documents. We expect your covering letter to clearly outline your suitability for the role, and directly address the requirements of the person specification above. Closing date 18th February, interviews are expected to take place before March 10th.
Vacancy Description: School of Geography and Sustainable Development Salary: £34,304 per annum Start Date: 11 April 2022, or as soon as possible thereafter Fixed term until 10 April 2023
We invite applications from candidates with interests in Geography and Sustainable Development, particularly those with expertise in Political Ecology, and commitment to excellence in teaching. You will contribute to the highly successful undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes in Geography and Sustainable Development at St Andrews, with opportunities to interact with our excellent research clusters.
Your role will involve engaging the interest and motivation of students and inspiring them to learn by fostering debate and developing their ability to engage in critical discourse and rational thinking. You will work as a member of our teaching teams under the overall direction of the School’s Director of Teaching. You will have excellent organisational and administrative skills, and the ability to communicate complex information and ideas effectively. You will be encouraged to seek ways to improve performance by reflecting on teaching design and delivery, and by analysing feedback.
You will have completed, or be about to complete, a PhD in Human Geography, Sustainable Development, Environmental Studies, or a related field with a specialisation in Political Ecology or Environmental Justice. Experience with a range of teaching formats, including lectures, IT labs, tutorials, seminars, practical and field classes as well as the supervision of group work would be an advantage, as would experience of teaching within the Scottish university system.
This is a full time post on a fixed term contract until 10 April 2023.
Applications are particularly welcome from people from the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community, and other protected characteristics who are under-represented in Geography & Sustainable Development posts at the University.
Equality, diversity and inclusion are at the heart of the St Andrews experience. We strive to create a fair and inclusive culture demonstrated through our commitment to diversity awards (Athena Swan, Carer Positive, LGBT Charter, Race Charters and Stonewall). We celebrate diversity by promoting profiles of BAME, LGBTIQ+ staff and supporting networks including the Staff BAME Network; Staff with Disabilities Network; Staff LGBTIQ+ Network; and the Staff Parents & Carers Network. Full details available online: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/hr/edi/.
The School of Earth and Sustainability (SES) at Northern Arizona University invites applications for a full-time, benefit eligible, tenure-track position of Assistant Professor in Environmental policy (#605899). We seek an environmental policy social scientist who will contribute to existing strengths in research, teaching, and practice within SES. We welcome applicants with interdisciplinary training and research experience in the field of environmental policy and governance related to human, policy, and justice dimensions of climate change, adaptation and/or mitigation, equitable renewable and sustainable energy system transitions, or other policy topics related to environmental sustainability. The successful candidate will prioritize SES’s efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion while engaging students, faculty, and external stakeholders on challenging issues critical to a just and sustainable society. This position builds on university strengths in Environmental Sustainability. Scholars are sought to develop new collaborations that will enable interdisciplinary science-based applied scholarship and teaching on local to global sustainability challenges. The successful candidate is required to maintain an active research program, provide quality teaching for SES, and contribute service to the School, the university, and profession. We encourage applications by candidates who will contribute to the cultural diversity of NAU and who value cultural, ethnic, and racial differences.
For full consideration, apply for position #605899 by 21 January 2022.
Northern Arizona University sits at the base of mountains sacred to Indigenous peoples throughout the region. We honor their past, present, and future generations who have lived here for millennia and will forever call this place home.
The Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM) at the University of Oslo has a vacant 3-year PhD-position to work with the project “Pandemic Entanglements: The Political Ecology of Industrial Meat Production in the Pandemic Era (PANDEMEAT)” funded by the Research Council of Norway.
The PhD candidate will study how people involved in poultry production and consumption in Norway frame (narrate, define, articulate) and understand what it means to live and deal with past and ongoing outbreaks of avian influenza. This involves conducting primarily qualitative fieldwork in Norway, including speaking with stakeholders from various industries, social backgrounds and levels of governance, and reviewing documents and texts (official regulations, reports, media coverage, etc.). High competence in Norwegian and previous experience of conducting qualitative research will be an asset.
The candidate’s research provide the candidate with the opportunity to obtain a PhD in the social sciences.
Qualification requirements
Academic qualifications:
The candidate must have completed an academically relevant education corresponding to a five-year Norwegian degree programme, where 120 credits are at Master ́s degree level. Relevant academic fields include in no particular order, human geography, social anthropology, sociology, gender studies, science and technology studies, history, media studies, political communication, political sciences, development studies and development, environment and cultural change.
Minimum B for both GPA and Master thesis
Documented proficiency in both written and oral English
Documented sufficient knowledge of a Scandinavian language
Documented experience with qualitative research methods
How to apply
The application should include
A letter of intent (max 1.5 pages)
The applicant’s complete CV
Electronic copy of Master´s thesis if available
Certified copies of relevant transcripts and diplomas
Documentation of proficiency in a Scandinavian language and English
Contact details for two references
A research proposal that specifies a clearly defined research question, explicit and achievable aims and objectives, a brief description of a relevant conceptual or theoretical framework to answer the research question, a methods section that convincingly relates to the research question and objectives, a list of references and a progress plan. Methods may include but are not limited to participant observation, qualitative interviews, surveys, discourse analysis, visual ethnography. The maximum word count is 1500 words (excluding references and progress plan).
Shortlisted candidates will be invited to an interview, which will be conducted in English and Norwegian.
A copy of the research project is available upon request.
Contact information
Professor Mariel Aguilar-Støen (mariel.stoen@sum.uio.no
Head of office Gitte Egenberg (gitte.egenberg@sum.uio.no)
We hope that you are having a restful break at this end of year time.
This month we are delighted to feature the great work of another POLLEN node, Treatied Spaces Research Group at the University of Hull, UK. If your node is keen to share your fantastic work in upcoming newsletters, please write to us at politicalecologynetwork@gmail.com. We would always like to generate dialogue around your work. As always, we are happy to post the latest publications, CfPs and more from our lively community. We also welcome proposals for blog posts on the POLLEN blog – please contact us at the same email address with any ideas!
Each monthly newsletter includes a brief introduction to one of our many POLLEN nodes, to build connections across our community. This month we would like to introduce you to our node at Treatied Spaces Research Group at the University of Hull, UK.
Treatied Spaces Research Group, University of Hull
Overview
The Treatied Spaces Research Group (TSRG) is an interdisciplinary research group based at the University of Hull, UK. It brings together educators, Indigenous groups, museums, creative artists, NGOs, and policymakers to foreground treaties and environmental concerns. The group gratefully receives funding from United Kingdom Research and Innovation, the British Academy, and the Leverhulme Trust.
The group aims to deepen understanding of treaties as living and contested instruments of inter-cultural diplomacy. Historic and contemporary treaties remain central to the quest for social and environmental justice across the globe and are a foundation for renewed and more balanced relationships between Indigenous and settler communities. They shape our understanding of sovereignty over land, resources, peoples and environments on earth, in the seas and in space. We advance these themes through research, publication, innovative digital platforms and data visualisation, public engagement and outreach, impact and other forms of knowledge exchange.
Node members
Professor Joy Porter Joy co-leads the TSRG and is an interdisciplinary researcher and teacher of Indigenous environmental history. She is a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow for a project on the environmental record of Richard Nixon, PI for an AHRC Standard Research Grant, ‘Brightening the Covenant Chain’, (2021-24), and lead editor of the Cambridge University Press book series, Elements in Indigenous Environmental Research. She is a UK REF 2021 Panel Member (History) and a sub-panel Interdisciplinary Advisor. She serves on the AHRC Strategic Review College, and reviews for the Fulbright Commission, the Leverhulme Trust, NERC, the Finnish Research Council and Higher Education Academy of which she a Senior Fellow and a National Teaching Fellow. She is a frequent contributor to a range of media.
Dr Charles Prior Charles Prior is Reader in Early Modern History and head of the School of Humanities at the University of Hull. He has published widely on topics in early modern political thought. His most recent project, which was supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, is Settlers in Indian Country: Sovereignty and Indigenous Power in Early America (Cambridge, 2020). It foregrounds Indigenous conceptions of sovereignty and power to refine the place of settler colonialism in American colonial and early republican history. His current project, is Treaty Ground: Diplomacy and the Politics of Sovereignty in the American Northeast.
Dr Matthias Wong (Post Doctorate Research Assistant) Matthias is an historian of early modern mental worlds. His work at Treatied Spaces understands treaties and diplomatic negotiations as similar sites of ideational encounter and adaptation. These were occasions where different conceptual universes were brought into conversation, where ideas and metaphors were learned and traded. By understanding how each side communicated concepts like territory and sovereignty, we can gain valuable insights into how they saw and understood the world around them, and how they thought the world should function. Matthias contributes to the development of digital projects including visualising concepts of space and movement in the form of a ‘Kinetic Map’.
Professor Gregory Smithers (British Academy Global Professor) Gregory Smithers (Virginia Commonwealth University) is a British Academy Global Professor whose research and writing focuses on the histories of Indigenous people and African Americans from the eighteenth century to the present. His work explores the history of the Cherokee people, Indigenous history from the Mountain South to California and the Southwest Pacific, and environmental history.
Hannah Cusworth (PhD Researcher) Hannah is an AHRC funded PhD researcher working in collaboration with English Heritage and the University of Hull. Her work explores the history of mahogany in Marble Hill, Chiswick and Kenwood house and the people who were involved in the 18th century Atlantic mahogany trade. She is particularly interested in the role of West African knowledge, Indigenous communities, free people of colour and women across the Atlantic World. Her research considers what is gained when we include more people in the study of the mahogany trade, from a historical and contemporary perspective.
Rebecca Slatcher (PhD Student) Rebecca’s PhD is a collaborative project with the British Library that focuses on the library’s print collections of North American Indigenous languages, post-1850. She interrogates the ways languages have been collected, classified and catalogued in heritage institutions and use decolonial methodologies to find Indigenous presence in the collections and explore the afterlives of language materials.
Phoebe Medlicott-Revell (Leverhulme Scholarship Doctoral Candidate) In Phoebe’s project with the Centre for Water Cultures, studying the conflict at Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska, she is researching environmental justice and Indigenous sovereign rights through the fight against the environmental destruction caused by the exploitation of Pebble Mine. Understanding our relationship with water and environment is at the core of this project.
Caroline Ward (Project Administrator) Caroline is the Project Administrator providing administrative support to the group’s researchers, collaborators and partners. Caroline can be contacted by email at C.J.Ward@hull.ac.uk
Promoting POLLEN collaboration
Do you write with other members of POLLEN? To gain visibility for collaborations across our network, we invite you to consider adding something along these lines to your acknowledgments: “This paper represents collaborative work with colleagues in the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN).”
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Anguelovski, I. and Connolly, J.J.T. (eds.) 2021. The Green City and Social Injustice: 21 Tales from North America and Europe. London: Routledge.
Calvário, R., Kaika, M. and Velegrakis G. (eds.) 2021. The Political Ecology of Austerity: Crisis, Social Movements, and the Environment. London: Routledge.
Dunlap, A. and Brock, A. 2021. ‘When the Wolf Guards the Sheep: Green Extractivism in Germany and Mexico’. In J. Matee, S. Springer, M. Locret, et al. (eds). Energies Beyond the State: Anarchist Political Ecology and the Liberation of Nature. Vol. 3. London: Rowman & Littlefield, pp 91-123.
Locret-Collet, M., Springer, S., Mateer, J., and Acker, M. (eds.) 2021. Inhabiting the earth: Anarchist political ecology for landscapes of emancipation. Rowman & Littlefield, London.
Morrison, R. 2021. The New Green Republic. Waterside Productions.
Paprocki, K. 2021. Threatening Dystopias: The Global Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Springer, S., Mateer, J., Locret-Collet, M., and Acker, M. (eds.) 2021. Undoing human supremacy: Anarchist political ecology in the face of anthroparchy. Rowman & Littlefield, London.
Tinti, A. 2022. Oil and National Identity in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq: Conflicts at the Frontier of Petro-Capitalism. London: Routledge, <www.routledge.com/9780367751265>.
Amira, S. 2021. ‘The slow violence of Israeli settler-colonialism and the political ecology of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank’. Settler Colonial Studies, <https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2021.2007747>.
Boucher, J., and Mérida, W. 2022. ‘Inflated lives and a clean tech privilege in Washington State: Policy amidst spatialized affluence’. Energy Research & Social Science, vol. 85. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102418>.
García-López, G. A., Lang, U., and Singh, N. 2021. ‘Commons, Commoning and Co-Becoming: Nurturing Life-in-Common and Post-Capitalist Futures (An Introduction to the Theme Issue)’. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Online First. <https://10.1177/25148486211051081>.
García-Lamarca, M., Anguelovski, I., Cole, H.V.S., Connolly, J.J.T., Pérez-del-Pulgar, C., Shokry, G., Triguero-Mas, M. 2022. ‘Urban green grabbing: Residential real estate developers discourse and practice in gentrifying Global North neighborhoods’. Geoforum, vol. 128.<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.11.016>.
Sovacool, B, and Dunlap A. 2022. ‘Anarchy, war, or revolt? Radical perspectives for climate protection, insurgency and civil disobedience in a low-carbon era’. Energy Research & Social Science, pp. 1-17. <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462962100503X>.
Sakshi Aravind, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge
Markus Kröger, Global Development Studies, University of Helsinki
Capitalism and Industrialism have been systematically consuming the planet, working to assimilate and homogenize human and nonhumans into their networks of production and consumption. This has had exterminating consequences, taking a serious toll on human and biological diversity, triggering widespread socio-ecological crisis, climate catastrophe, and is making a sixth extinction an imminent possibility. John Clark consequently has argued that the ‘Necrocene’ is far more accurate than the Anthropocene to describe this geological epoch. The harsh realities of technological capitalism raise the conceptual relevance of genocide and ecocide in research. Why are researchers systematically underestimating the progressive and ‘slow’ cumulative impact of capitalism, industrialization, and technological development?
This webinar focuses on bridging this gap by exploring colonial/critical genocide studies in relationship to political ecology, anthropology, and human geography. Discussing critical genocide studies in relationship to fieldwork, this webinar unpacks the particular relevance of the ‘genocide-ecocide nexus’ to political ecology, but also the difficult dilemmas faced when substantiating the claims of research participants on the ground. This webinar begins with the keynote speaker, Dr. Alexander Dunlap, who will give a presentation based around two open access articles (see links below) discussing how they came to critical genocide studies, their experience with applying these terms, their relevance, and the dilemmas.
Laying out a terrain of terms, reasons, and concerns, 3 discussants— Markus Kröger, Sakshi Aravind and Martín Correa Arce—will reflect on these studies, concerns, and dilemmas in relation to their own experiences, work, and ideas. After short presentations from each these scholars and an exchange, the floor will then open for a facilitated Q&A session with the attendants.
2) Call for application
Surfing & Sustainability: Political Ecology in Costa Rica July 5 – August 2, 2022
Taught by Dr. Pete Brosius, Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia
Surfing is simultaneously a sport, a lifestyle, and an iconic part of American and global popular culture. It is also an ideal lens for analyzing a range of contemporary cultural processes associated with commodification and globalization, histories of colonialism, gender, tourism, and sustainability. The Surfing & Sustainability program introduces students to surfing as a globalizing cultural phenomenon as it is manifested in communities on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, a country widely recognized as an icon of successful conservation. As a magnet for global surf tourism, Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast is being rapidly transformed as communities face the complex challenges of promoting sustainability and conserving nature while catering to increasing demands for development and economic growth.
During the program students visit a number of national parks and reserves as well as sites of rapid development – resorts, large housing tracts and gated communities. In the process we will meet with people representing different viewpoints on conservation, development, and sustainability. The program emphasizes an ethnographic approach and includes surfing/learning to surf as an experiential component of observation and analysis.
In the Surfing and Sustainability program students will explore fraught coastal transitions on the ground (and in the water), as they receive 6 credits in 2 course offerings: Communities, Conservation, and Development (ANTH/GEOG 4275/6275) and the Anthropology of Surfing (ANTH4900/6900).
1. A 1-year scholarship in France for Post-doctoral researcher Interests: sustainable science and specifically on ways to reduce the carbon footprint of science
The funding includes: 2500 € monthly salary + free full coverage of health insurance + free extra health insurance coverage. For installation a 500 € stipend will be given. French partners in Toulouse are also willing to paid first travel expenses to some extent. (Project Start: 09/2022) Requirement: Be of foreign nationality; have received PhD between 12/2016 and 12/2021.
We expect the post-doctoral project to focus on: – Quantifying and articulating solution complementary to technological options, including the refinement of the existing GHG budget, the creation of quantitative reduction scenarios, discussing how to go towards rules making science laboratory greener (less flying, more careful choice of spending, re orientation of research etc.) – Exploring and understanding individual, collective and structural effects resisting or motivating these changes within laboratory of different fields, including inequalities arising from gender or status (for example).
More info on potential approaches and ongoing work on these topics are on the website of the French collaborative group on these topics: https://labos1point5.org/ . The project would be hosted in Toulouse and work in collaboration with several scientists of the Atelier d’Ecologie Politique (which includes both natural and social scientist, as the project would likely include both aspects). An interest in interdisciplinary approach and for social sciences is required, though a formal background in social science is not necessary.
Candidates interested in these topics should make contact as soon as possible to discuss and draft a project. Foreign candidates with an already structured project in the broad field of societal transition related to the environmental crisis as it may be hosted by some members of the Atecopol network would also be considered.
2. Fully funded PhD position: critical analyses of sustainable development approaches By Section for Development Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University Deadline for applications: 16th Jan 2022
Based on global and North/South perspectives, the Ph.D. candidate will engage in research that critically examines aspects of major approaches to sustainable development, spanning from the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to degrowth approaches. Main challenges for universal human well-being today and in the future are related to global warming, poverty, and inequality. The Ph.D. candidate’s work might include analyses of how some of these challenges are addressed in one or more of the approaches. Contexts of economic and political power relations should be emphasised. Framings and theories can be drawn from relevant social science disciplines and fields such as development studies, education and development, political economy, world-systems analysis, and/or political ecology.
From the Chair for Sustainability Governance, Institute of Environmental Social Sciences and Geography, University of Freiburg
Panel Description:
Throughout the world, new patterns of resource exploration, extraction and nature appropriation are rapidly emerging in the name of sustainable, low-carbon, and peaceful futures (Fairhead, Leach, & Scoones, 2012; Church & Crawford, 2018). Examples range from the exacerbated extraction of ‘transition minerals’ in the Global South that facilitate the shift towards low-carbon economies principally in the Global North (Jowitt, Mudd, & Thompson, 2020; Parra, Lewis, & Ali, 2021) to numerous international greening schemes for protecting biodiversity hotspots (Fairhead, Leach, & Scoones, 2012; Woods, 2019). At the same time, these trends have consolidated as a widespread government strategy for attaining sustainable development, particularly in Latin America (Arsel, Hogenboom, & Pellegrini, 2016). However, the rapid expansion of resource appropriation and extraction touches ground in sensitive environments populated by indigenous and other marginalized populations already affected by complex local settings (Sonter, Dade, Watson, & Valenta, 2020). As one can expect, these developments have dire environmental justice implications (Temper, del Bene, & Martinez-Alier, 2015). They bring along human rights violations, environmental damage, biodiversity loss, clashing imaginaries of the ‘good life’, and bitter conflicts with varying degrees of intensity and violence (Leifsen, Gustafsson, Guzmán-Gallegos, & Schilling-Vacaflor, 2017). Thus governance factors and socio-environmental conflicts will crucially shape development trajectories based on the appropriation of nature and the extraction of natural resources over the next decades (Jowitt et al., 2020).
In connection to the above described trends, excellent Political Ecology research has been conducted on themes such as resistance and contestation (e.g. Bebbington & Bury, 2013; Engels & Dietz, 2017), and participation in natural resource governance (Leifsen et al., 2017). While power has been a key analytical focus in these studies, the links between power, knowledge and expertise intertwined with socio-ecological conflicts and natural resource governance processes (e.g. Escobar, 1998; Forsyth, 2015, 2020; Nightingale, 2005) are less common though they seem to be slowly but steadily gaining academic attention (see e.g. Conde, 2014; Kirsch, 2014; Li, 2015; Sánchez Vázquez, 2019). Astonishingly, legal processes through which citizens, NGOs and governments seek redress for environmental injustices are relatively under-explored in this emerging line of inquiry and among Political Ecologists more broadly. Yet, legal processes constitute one of the most visible sites for political tensions involving contemporary socio-ecological conflicts and contested natural resource governance arrangements (Vela-Almeida & Torres, 2021). They are privileged sites where different actors seek redress for environmental injustices suffered by human and non-human subjects. For example, in the context of extractive projects, in countries like Ecuador, lawsuits are being brought forward for alleged violations of consultation rights and the rights of nature (Vela-Almeida & Torres, 2021). Similarly, in Alaska courtrooms are venues in which government decisions regarding zoning and environmental permitting are challenged by actors who invoke indigenous rights and non-human rights and wield multiple environmental knowledges (Panikkar, 2020; Tollefson & Panikkar, 2020). Likewise, environmental liability litigation is becoming a promising practice to remedy biodiversity loss (Phelps et al., 2021). Another interesting example can be seen in conflict-affected countries like Colombia, where environmental damages caused during the armed conflict, such as those related to illegal extractive activities, are expected to be remediated as part of transitional justice processes in the post-conflict context (Hulme, 2017; Gómez-Betancur, 2020; Ramírez Gutiérrez & Saavedra Eslava, 2020). All these legal processes require the articulation and recognition of caused environmental injustices, the assignment of responsibility, and the establishment of appropriate measures to redress harm. Thus, these processes withhold the opportunity of formal and public recognition of multiple knowledge systems, values and rights (Panikkar, 2020; Phelps et al., 2021).
In this panel, we seek to gain a deep and critical understanding of such power/knowledge dynamics in legal spheres and processes initiated to advance environmental justice objectives linked to contested natural resource governance. We invite contributions that examine and reflect about how established discourses and procedures for the production and verification of what counts as legitimate knowledge in the governance of natural resources are maintained, destabilized, or modified and thereby shape particular power relationships between governments, corporations and citizens with varying implications for environmental justice. Likewise, we would appreciate contributions that explore the implications that the privileging of particular knowledge systems and administrative rationalities within legal contexts has for citizen engagement in contested natural resource governance processes. Contributions to this panel can consider the following research questions:
· How are different types of knowledge and expertise adjudicated in legal processes initiated to advance environmental justice objectives in connection to contested natural resource projects or governance decisions?
· Which types of knowledge and expertise are rendered authoritative and which are rendered inappropriate in these legal contexts?
· Who represents and embodies this authoritative knowledge and expertise and who represents and embodies the subjugated knowledge and expertise?
· How do processes of racialization/gendering/class and intersecting social relations of power enter into the construction of and disqualification in categories of ‘expertise’ in legal processes?
· In which ways do marginalized actors negotiate and navigate expertise barriers and epistemic hierarchies in courtrooms?
· What knowledge politics emerge in courtrooms when court-cases revolt around non-anthropocentric rights, e.g. rights of nature?
Please send your abstract and additional information to cristina.espinosa@envgov.uni-freiburg.de and zabrina.welter@envgov.uni-freiburg.de as follows:
Name, affiliation, presentation title (maximum 20 words), abstract (maximum 250 words), and 3 keywords
Submission deadline: December 10, 2021
References
Arsel, M., Hogenboom, B., & Pellegrini, L. (2016). The extractive imperative and the boom in environmental conflicts at the end of the progressive cycle in Latin America. The Extractive Industries and Society, 3(4), 877-879. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2016.10.013
Bebbington, A., & Bury, J. (2013). Subterranean Struggles: New Dynamics of Mining, Oil, and Gas in Latin America: University of Texas Press.
Church, C., & Crawford, A. (2018). Green Conflict Minerals. International Institute for Sustainable Development.
Conde, M. (2014). Activism mobilising science. Ecological Economics, 105, 67-77.
Engels, B., & Dietz, K. (2017). Contested Extractivism, Society and the State Struggles over Mining and Land Development, Justice and Citizenship, SpringerLink. Bücher, Springer eBook Collection. Political Science and International Studies (pp. Online-Ressource (XV, 273 p. 272 illus, online resource)). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fairhead, J., Leach, M., & Scoones, I. (2012). Green grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?. Journal of peasant studies, 39(2), 237-261.
Gómez-Betancur, L. (2020). The rights of nature in the Colombian Amazon: examining challenges and opportunities in a transitional justice setting. UCLA J. Int’l L. Foreign Aff., 25, 41.
Hulme, K. (2017). Using a framework of human rights and transitional justice for post-conflict environmental protection and remediation.
Escobar, A. (1998). Whose knowledge, whose nature? Biodiversity, conservation, and the political ecology of social movements. Journal of Political Ecology, 5(1), 53-82.
Forsyth, T. (2015). Integrating science and politics in political ecology. In R. L. Bryant (Ed.), The international handbook of political ecology: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Forsyth, T. (2020). Who Shapes the Politics of Expertise? Co-Production and Authoritative Knowledge in Thailand’s Political Forests. Antipode, 52(4), 1039-1059. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12545
Jowitt, S. M., Mudd, G. M., & Thompson, J. F. H. (2020). Future availability of non-renewable metal resources and the influence of environmental, social, and governance conflicts on metal production. Communications Earth & Environment, 1(1), 13. doi:10.1038/s43247-020-0011-0
Kirsch, S. (2014). Mining capitalism: The relationship between corporations and their critics: Univ of California Press.
Leifsen, E., Gustafsson, M.-T., Guzmán-Gallegos, M. A., & Schilling-Vacaflor, A. (2017). New mechanisms of participation in extractive governance: between technologies of governance and resistance work. Third World Quarterly, 38(5), 1043-1057. doi:10.1080/01436597.2017.1302329
Li, F. (2015). Unearthing conflict: corporate mining, activism, and expertise in Peru. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Nightingale, A. J. (2005). “The Experts Taught Us All We Know”: Professionalisation and Knowledge in Nepalese Community Forestry. Antipode, 37(3), 581-604. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0066-4812.2005.00512.x
Panikkar, B. (2020). “Litigation Is Our Last Resort”: Addressing Uncertainty, Undone Science, and Bias in Court to Assert Indigenous Rights. Nature and Culture, 15(2), 173-198. doi:10.3167/nc.2020.150204
Parra, C., Lewis, B., & Ali, S. H. (2021). Mining, Materials, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 2030 and Beyond. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Phelps, J., Aravind, S., Cheyne, S., Dabrowski Pedrini, I., Fajrini, R., Jones, C. A., . . . Webb, E. L. (2021). Environmental liability litigation could remedy biodiversity loss. Conservation Letters, n/a(n/a), e12821. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12821
Ramírez Gutiérrez, C., & Saavedra Eslava, A. S. (2020). Protection of the Natural Environment under International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law: The Case of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia. UCLA J. Int’l L. Foreign Aff., 25, 123.
Sánchez Vázquez, L. (2019). ¿Ciencia de resistencia? Monitoreos ambientales participativos en contextos de conflicto ambiental. Reflexiones desde una mirada decolonial. Revista de Paz y Conflictos, 12(2), 57-79. doi:10.30827/revpaz.v12i2.10399
Sonter, L. J., Dade, M. C., Watson, J. E. M., & Valenta, R. K. (2020). Renewable energy production will exacerbate mining threats to biodiversity. Nature Communications, 11(1), 4174. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-17928-5
Temper, L., del Bene, D., & Martinez-Alier, J. (2015). Mapping the frontiers and front lines of global environmental justice: the EJAtlas. Journal of Political Ecology, 22, 255-278. doi:10.2458/v22i1.21108
Tollefson, J., & Panikkar, B. (2020). Contested extractivism: impact assessment, public engagement, and environmental knowledge production in Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Journal of Political Ecology, 21(1), 1166-1188. doi:https://doi.org/10.2458/v27i1.23828
Vela-Almeida, D., & Torres, N. (2021). Consultation in Ecuador: Institutional Fragility and Participation in National Extractive Policy. Latin American Perspectives, 48(3), 172-191. doi:10.1177/0094582X211008148
Woods, K. M. (2019). Green territoriality: Conservation as state territorialization in a resource frontier. Human Ecology, 47(2), 217-232.
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