As a political ecologist, I use historically-grounded case studies that extend from rural villages to international policy arenas to study power relations in environmental politics. I employ novel techniques, such as collaborative and multi-sited institutional ethnography, in field sites from Zimbabwe, Australia, Madagascar, and the United States to the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD-COP). My current research explores: 1) the increasing reliance on technologies like artificial intelligence in biodiversity and climate politics; 2) how Indigenous Peoples and local community activists are advancing resource rights by framing them as basic human rights; and 3) how the embrace of Smart-Earth and innovative financial technologies—and the associated influence of investment banks and big technology companies—are reshaping environmental governance.
This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Association of University Women, the Rural Sociological Society, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Fulbright Program and the Foreign Language and Area Studies Program.
